


A Miraculous TikTok Account

by oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (in every sense of the word), ... - Freeform, Adrien Agreste Never Went to Public School, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Acts Like a Cat, Chloe and Adrien are Rich Kids(TM), Chloé Bourgeois Redemption, College Student Nino Lahiffe, Master Fu Bashing (Miraculous Ladybug), Miraculous Side Effects, Sleep Deprived Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Social Media, Superhero Obsessed Alya Cesaire, also a gabriel agreste hate account, gabriel agreste knows adrien's identity, i changed a lot of stuff to be honest, ill probably add tags as i go along, im going to say yes, no betas we die like Emilie Agreste probably did, obviously, okay so, or not im lazy, rewriting miraculous, some of the powers work different, switching POVs, the backstories for how they get miraculous has changed, the characters act different, there's shenanigans, they're aged up to college age, this is a master fu hate account now btw, wait is this even miraculous anymore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 41,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28878747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol/pseuds/oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol
Summary: Chloe fucked up. Bad.The solution? Making five superpowered teenagers who hate each other live together for an indeterminate amount of time.Nothing can go wrong.
Relationships: ?? - Relationship, Adrien Agreste & Chloé Bourgeois & Alya Césaire & Marinette Dupain-Cheng & Nino Lahiffe, help - Relationship
Comments: 75
Kudos: 222





	1. Chapter 1

Rena Rouge had never been so excited for anything in her life.

Of course, at first glance people would find that insane. She was going to a meeting, after all.

But it was the people that were also attending that had her practically vibrating she was so excited.

All the heroes of Paris were to be gathered under Master Fu’s orders. They hardly ever worked together, so having all four (five, including her, she reminded herself) together was pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime event. She wished she was still a reporter, this was the kind of thing she would have killed to report on back in the day…

Still, a part of her had to wonder why exactly they were all there. Master Fu had been vague when he’d called. She had some theories, of course, but all this waiting was starting to shift her excitement into nerves. She attempted to smooth out her tail, but ended up just tucking it under herself to hide her anxiety. Maybe she shouldn’t have come so early.

The first person to show up after her was Carapace. He’d poked his head through the door, the hood of his sleeveless hoodie pulled so low over his face that it partially hid his face. Then he broke into a wide smile and pushed the hood up a little to show the green glint of his mask. He made his way inside and took a seat next to her.

“Salu -- Bonjour!” His confident smile melted into an uncomfortable one. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Salut,” she said, not wanting him to feel awkward.

Besides, that was kind of his whole shtick. Carapace was the relatable hero, the one you could vent about your problems to.

(Well, technically you could vent to all of Paris’s heroes, they didn’t mind… but Carapace was the only one that felt close enough to actually try it with.)

Silence lapsed between them as they sat there. She tried to remember whether she had met him as Rena Rouge or not and he seemed unsure whether she wanted to talk, but they were distracted from their thoughts when Chloe walked into the room.

Chloe just kind of… does that. If Carapace was the personable one, Chloe was the one who felt the most unreachable. She was open about her persona, had to be after everyone found out about it, and exactly how relatable can a mayor’s daughter be? She’d leaned into it, though, opting for golden jewelry and wings that glinted in the light.

Neither of the present heroes said anything to Chloe, and Chloe didn’t acknowledge them.

Was it rude? Technically. But what else were they supposed to do? Chloe had made it clear a week ago that she didn’t like them. There’s no good conversation that can come after you get shit-talked on live tv.

The last person to be on time was Chat Noir. The original hero. He gave them a smile worthy of a model as he slipped inside. “Bonjour.”

“Bonjour,” said Rena and Carapace, and even Chloe gave a quiet hum of acknowledgement.

The leather of his black suit made a high-pitched squeaking sound against the chair when he sat down that made both him and Rena’s hair stand on end (literally).

Master Fu walked in to find Carapace trying to soothe two very frazzled miraculous holders and Chloe ignoring them on her phone.

He sighed and gently rapped his cane on the ground.

Instantly, the room quieted. Chat and Rena snapped out of their shock.

“Bonjour,” chorused everyone.

He smiled tensely. “Bonjour. Where’s Ladybug?”

“Not here yet,” said Chloe. She set her phone down on the table and crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s nothing in the papers, either.”

Master Fu nodded a little bit and took a seat at the head of the table. “We can wait for her. There’s no rush.”

Carapace hesitated before raising his hand. “There’s… a bit of a rush. I was procrastinating a college app and it’s due tonight…”

“It shouldn’t be long,” said Master Fu.

This was true. About five minutes later Ladybug burst into the room, panting softly. “Bon… jour...”

“Thanks for finally showing up,” said Chloe.

No one knew for sure, because Ladybug’s eyes were completely white, but they got the feeling that she was rolling her eyes.

“There was an akuma.”

“Really? There was nothing on the news…” said Rena, genuinely confused, but she trailed off when she realized that maybe getting one of your childhood heroes in trouble was a bad idea if you wanted to have a good relationship with said childhood hero.

Thankfully, Ladybug didn’t seem all that annoyed. “That’s because the news anchor and her crew got swallowed by it before they could get any information out. Anyways, it’s dealt with.”

With that, Ladybug took a seat in the last open chair. There was a beat as she smoothed out the red and black folds of her dress and then she crossed her legs and smiled at everyone.

Master Fu sighed and shook his head, slowly placing his cane in his lap.

“Now that everyone is here, would anyone like to guess why?”

The heroes of Paris stiffened a little bit. That sounded a lot like they were in trouble. They didn’t want to be in trouble.

Rena slowly raised her hand. “Is it… because of what Queen Bee said last week?”

The heroes’ expressions soured a bit at the memory. The video of Chloe trash talking all of them to an interviewer had blown up, and now they could hardly do anything without having at least one reporter hounding them for a response.

None of them could give any, though Rena was sure at least some of them were tempted. The public was supposed to think them all friends, or at worst friendly coworkers. It gave them hope, seeing them all working together for team ups, and analyzing their friendship dynamics kept them relatively distracted from the fact that it had been six years since the first hero had first arrived on the scene and they still had virtually nothing on Hawkmoth.

But now that illusion had been shattered (and trust her, she knew a lot about illusions). Akumas had been more active this week.

“That’s precisely it. Thank you, Rena.” Master Fu regarded them all carefully. “What do you think we should do about it?”

Really, they’d had no clue what to do about their image.

Chloe hadn’t been joking, she’d made that plainly obvious, so saying she didn’t mean it or that was just the type of friendship they had wasn’t going to work…

“Act more like friends…?” Said Ladybug when no one spoke up.

Master Fu nodded.

“Oh, so more team ups or something?” Said Chat.

Carapace shrugged. “Don’t know how much of that I can do, since I’m the only one that can consistently get in the water, but…” He shrugged again. “... sure, I can do that.”

The old man drummed his fingers on the table lightly to bring their attention back to him.

“Yes, that, too, but I was thinking something more… convincing.”

Rena decided that she definitely didn’t like the way his eyes gleamed.

“So, until you manage to defeat Hawkmoth, you will all be living together.”

Everyone opened their mouths to argue but he held up a hand to silence them.

“And you’ll be doing it publicly, posting regular content about it to a social media platform of your choosing…” He put his hand down. “Now you can complain.”

The teens all immediately started attempting to talk over each other, their voices steadily increasing in volume as they tried to be the one to get their complaints heard.

Rena was silent. Part of her thought that she should be complaining. She had siblings, after all, she had a life outside of heroism… but she couldn’t help but smile. She would be living with her childhood heroes (for a long time, probably, because the Hawkmoth situation was not getting better)! And, really, her sisters could get annoying at times. She’d love an excuse to get away.

So instead of arguing she leaned back in her chair and watched everyone else.

Chloe was the most passionate about it, her jewelry flashing with every wild swing of her hand. Her voice was the loudest, but with the other voices in the room and the fact that she was literally buzzing in her anger it was hard to make out what she was saying.

Chat seemed distressed and Rena could see his mouth saying “I don’t think I’d be allowed to” repeatedly even if she couldn’t hear him over Chloe’s screeching.

Carapace’s face was set in an uncharacteristic frown as he complained. Sure, of those voicing their complaints, he definitely seemed the most relaxed, but the fact that he was frowning was in itself proof of just how upset he really was.

Ladybug was quiet, though she didn’t look particularly happy about it. Her lips were pressed into a thin line as if she was holding herself back from yelling as well and her fingers worried at the hem of her dress.

After a minute of this, Master Fu raised his hands for silence and instantly got it once again.

“Are you done?”

The general consensus was ‘no’, if the looks on their faces meant anything, but they nodded anyways.

“Good. Chat Noir, I’ve already worked everything out with your dad, we’ll discuss it more after the meeting is over.”

Chat relaxed a bit.

“Carapace, your schooling will not be affected. In fact, you’ll likely have a better college experience since all your food and toiletries will be paid for by me.”

Carapace’s expression shifted to a thoughtful one as he considered this.

“Queen Bee, must I remind you of the fact that you’re on thin ice as it is?”

Everyone’s eyes shot to Chloe, who had paled considerably. Her angry buzzing quickly lowered to a dull hum and she settled back into her seat.

Master Fu seemed sated by this, and he looked at Ladybug and Rena.

“And I’m assuming I don’t need to convince either of you?”

Rena shook her head instantly. Ladybug took her time to consider, but eventually shook her head as well.

“Great. Now, shall we talk logistics?”


	2. Chapter 2

Listen, Carapace was totally aware that he should be a little more concerned about what was going on. He just didn’t care.

After all, he had heard many horrifying things about college life. He liked Ramen but not enough to eat it for every meal and he wasn’t fond of the idea of explaining to his roommates why exactly he had to disappear every time there was an akuma instead of seeking shelter with them (and his scholarship wasn’t enough for him to afford an apartment to himself)...

So, yeah, having housing and food paid for for as long as Hawkmoth was around -- which, from the looks of it, was going to be until the man died of old age -- was sounding pretty good.

Sure, he’d have to deal with all the other heroes, but they couldn’t all be that bad. Rena and Chat seemed nice enough. Ladybug was nice, too, though she was more uptight than most people he hung out with. And maybe Chloe had grown a bit as a person since they’d gone to school together…

“You will all be maintaining your secret identities,” said Master Fu, pulling Carapace from his thoughts. “It lowers the chances of you slipping up and calling each other your civilian names in the field.”

Chloe’s nose scrunched a little bit. “So we’re going to be in costume the entire time?”

“No. I’ve created masks infused with the same magic that keeps people from figuring out your identities when you’re in costume.” He saw the look on Ladybug’s face and sighed. “You have two masks each, so you can wash them.”

Ladybug relaxed.

“Great, that settles that…” Master Fu pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. “Next up: what platform will you be using?”

“TikTok, obviously,” said Chloe in a tone that said ‘don’t fight me on this, you won’t win’.

Carapace fought the urge to roll his eyes. He supposed it had been too much to hope that she would be a better person.

Still, he rather liked the idea of TikTok. He was going to film school, after all, it would be fun to use all the different techniques he learned in his classes to enhance his videos. He supposed there was also YouTube or Instagram, but YouTube meant longer content and Instagram meant more regular posts. No, TikTok was probably the way to go.

When no one objected, Master Fu tapped his phone again. Carapace guessed he had some kind of checklist there.

“... right. You’ll need to create accounts now, please.”

Everyone seemed a bit surprised that he wanted it done so soon, but they all pulled out their phones.

They quickly figured out why he wanted them to do it in front of him, though.

Making an account was harder than they thought it was going to be.

They wanted it to make sense for them, but it turns out waiting multiple years to start an account leads to the most relevant names being taken. Who knew?

Ladybug, after many combinations, managed to get @TheRealLadybug. Fair enough, there probably weren’t many english-speakers pretending to be a Parisian hero.

Chloe got frustrated quickly and ended up finding the person who had stolen @QueenBee and had ‘politely suggested’ that they hand over the account name (and by that I mean she threatened them with legal action).

Chat was next. He looked at his phone, lost in thought, and then shrugged. “How much money do you think I should give for the name?”

What the fuck? How much money did he have? They all knew that Chloe was rich but, with a quick glance at Ladybug and Rena’s faces, he found that no one else had been aware that the cat had been rich, too.

“I’d say 15 thousand, at least,” said Chloe.

Chat nodded slowly. “I’ll do 20 just in case.”

What the fuck?!

But they brushed past this quickly (there was just too much for them to unpack there) and everyone looked at Carapace as Chat started talking to whoever it was about the @ChatNoir name.

Carapace thought for a few minutes. He didn’t want to copy Ladybug’s idea and he didn’t exactly have the resources to threaten or buy the name from anyone, so… He shrugged and started testing out stupid puns. After a minute he managed to secure the name @Capotpace. It was absolutely terrible. He loved it.

Finally, Rena was up. She didn’t even hesitate to show them that she had already come up with something: @RenaRogue.

“... I think you misspelled your name,” said Carapace after a few minutes.

Rena frowned and looked at it, then shook her head. “No, it’s just a reference. In America they call their villains Rogues.”

“You’re American?” Said Ladybug.

“Nope!”

How do you even respond to that? Easy: you don’t. Moving on…

Once Chat had managed to get his account set up, everyone followed each other.

Now what?

Master Fu sighed. “Now that that’s done, I’d like to discuss room placement.”

~

For those of you who don’t know: moving SUCKS.

The whole process is just the absolute worst. You have to choose what you care enough about to keep (and, apparently, “all of it” is not a viable answer), cram it all into boxes, and then get those boxes from one house to the next.

The torture isn’t over, then, though. Then you spend the next few days sleeping on a bare mattress, using some clothes you’d unpacked as makeshift blankets and pillows because you couldn’t remember which box you’d put your sheets in.

And he was doing all of this alone. Master Fu had insisted that they all refrain from bringing their friends and family because of the whole ‘secret identities’ thing.

He dropped onto the couch and glared at the millions of people that Chloe had hired to help her over the rim of his waterbottle. Maybe he should just tell the public his secret identity…

No. That was a bad idea. Unlike Chloe, his family couldn’t afford security guards needed to keep them safe in case Hawkmoth decided that it would be super cool and fun to kidnap a family member for ransom.

He felt someone take a seat next to him on the couch and looked over at Ladybug. She had opted to not be in costume, and it was almost weird to see her in normal clothes. A t-shirt and jeans? That wasn’t allowed. She was only able to wear black and red dresses, he was pretty sure that was a law or something.

He gave her a tired smile. “Salu -- sorry, bonjour.”

She blinked at him a few times. And, oh, she had blue eyes. Wild.

“Might as well say salut, we’re ‘friends’ now,” she said.

She held out a hand to him and he stared at it. After a second’s confusion he shook her hand.

She blinked again. “I… was asking for some water…”

He fought his rapidly growing embarrassment as he handed her the water bottle. “Sorry, I’m just tired.”

She smiled a little. The kind of smile you give scared civilians when you tell them it’s all going to be okay. It felt weird to have it turned on him. This whole conversation was just… weird.

“It’s fine, I am, too.”

She took a few sips of his water and then handed it back to him. He put the cap back on it and sunk into the couch.

They watched the last of Chloe’s helpers leave and he was somewhat glad to see that she seemed just as ticked off by them as he was.

He hesitated. “Want to help each other unpack?”

She blinked for a third time. Maybe that was why she covered her eyes when she fought, she didn’t want people to know when she was confused or shocked.

And then she gave him a smile, a real one this time. For a half second she looked like just a regular teen enjoying time with a friend --.

“I finished yesterday, actually, but I can help you if you want.”

Nope. Still Ladybug. Of course she was already done.

Still…

“Help would be nice, I guess.”


	3. Chapter 3

It was a good thing that Master Fu was giving them a month to get used to each other before he was going to make them start posting, because Chloe doubted any of them would give a convincing performance if they were supposed to start acting as friends.

It’s almost like suddenly shoving five people into a confined space and saying ‘play nice’ caused tensions. Who knew?

They were, for the most part, avoiding each other.

After all, even before the whole ordeal, their best relationships with each other were tense. Ladybug had something against Chat, Carapace didn’t see eye to eye with Ladybug, and everyone definitely hated Chloe.

The only person who didn’t seem to be mad at anyone was Rena… but she was also relatively new, and Chloe was pretty sure everyone agreed with her when she said that Rena was annoying.

Chloe walked into the kitchen and fought back a wince when she saw Rena at the table eating cereal. She turned around as slowly as possible. Maybe she wouldn’t notice her, she was on her phone after all --.

“Chloe!”

Dang.

Chloe turned back around and tried for a smile, exhausted as she was. The worst part of all of this was that none of them could properly express their grievances without fear of someone being akumatized.

“I have some questions for you!”

She was still going to be super passive-aggressive, though.

“Again? Didn’t you get enough information the first few times?”

“Nope! Every answer just gives me more questions.”

She supposed she should just be glad that she wasn’t currently in costume. Her wings tended to buzz when she was annoyed and she doubted Rena could take any of them being angry with her.

“Okay. Go ahead, I’ll answer while I make myself food,” said Chloe.

Rena started questioning her about her powers. Luckily they just seemed to be the basics of her powers (Do all bees listen to her or only worker bees? Does she need to eat a lot of honey to create honey in battle? How do her wings carry her if, by all known laws of aviation, there is no way --?). Sure, they were awkward questions to answer because she only had theories, but the words ‘I don’t know’ seemed to satiate Rena just as much as proper answers.

She saw people shuffling in to make food and take it back to their rooms as quietly as they could while Rena was distracted with Chloe. She sent them glares out of the corner of her eyes but she didn’t call out to them or anything. This was a consequence of her own screw up, she would have to be the one to deal with it.

So, she drizzled honey on her cheerios and resigned herself to answering more questions.

~

Know what? Even if this is the direct result of her own mistake, she was allowed to complain.

And complain she would.

These people are the worst.

You already know why Rena was annoying to live with. Her constant questions gave Chloe no peace outside of her room.

And, inside her room, she had to deal with listening to Ladybug working on… something above her at all hours. Did Ladybug sleep? Signs point to no. Chloe wished that Master Fu hadn’t let her convert the attic into a room, it was very clear at this point that the people who made the house had not expected people to live in the attic. For some reason.

Chat Noir was… a cat. He slept almost the entire day and left things everywhere in the few hours he was awake. (Chloe understood that he likely had a maid back at his house, she wasn’t used to not having her normal butler around herself, but even she was better about picking up after herself.)

The only slightly tolerable one was Carapace. He spent most of his time hiding out in his room, studying.

Chloe had considered getting a job to get away.

(She wouldn’t actually get one, obviously, that was peasant stuff. Still, the fact that she even briefly thought about it is proof enough of the stress she was under.)

Beyond that, chores were just… not getting done. Have you ever seen a cat do something it was told to? Seen a turtle do anything at all? No? Chloe hadn’t seen that, either. The two bathrooms were a mess of different products. The washing machine was constantly in use because people kept forgetting that they were the last person to put anything in. She was beginning to forget whether or not the floors were carpeted she hadn’t seen them in so long…

(The only things that got done were the garbage and dishes, and only because no one wanted the house to smell. Chloe wasn’t sure who did them. Chloe also didn’t care as long as it wasn’t her.)

So, yes, things were not looking good. The only reason no one got akumatized during that first week was that everyone was working to stay calm.

Eventually, they adapted like all humans -- or partial humans, because at this point she was pretty sure everyone was at least a little bit their animals -- do when put in a new situation.

Chat, after getting a single pimple because he couldn’t find one of his skincare treatments in the mess, ended up cleaning the bathrooms. It was here that the girls realized that some of the products in their own bathroom were, in fact, Chat’s products, but they were fine with it because now they didn’t have to bother cleaning.

Rena took up the rest of the cleaning. Apparently even the five of them were less messy than her younger siblings were. Whatever she found that had been there for days that wasn’t hers was thrown into Chat’s room -- which ended with a lot of things going ‘missing’ but it was better than finding stuff everywhere.

Ladybug ended up doing laundry. It seemed that Ladybug had some kind of knowledge about clothes (maybe it had something to do with the job she apparently had?), because they found that their clothes were completely devoid of wrinkles and that the colors were bright even after a few washes. They weren’t going to question it.

After seeing Chloe and Chat’s spending habits, Carapace had decided that he would be the one to go to the grocers. It may be Master Fu’s money, but apparently he couldn’t handle the idea of spending that much more than they needed.

And Chloe? Chloe did nothing.

Just kidding. She tended to all of the plants in and outside the house. She rather liked gardening, she thought, but she figured that it was just a side-effect of the bee miraculous. Either way, it led to the group having fresh herbs and vegetables on hand for cooking.

Hardly anyone cooked, but still. It’s the thought that counts... or something.

~

Chloe had finished her gardening for the day and now she looked at the sign up sheet for patrols.

She huffed a little when she saw that Chat had signed up for the night. Again.

She walked to Chat’s room to ask him to just let her have patrols tonight or at least take her with him.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes when she opened the door and found him curled up in a tiny patch of sunlight, asleep.

Wait… asleep…

She smiled at her kwami. Pollen never talked -- and she was pretty sure she’d never heard any of the others’ talk either -- but that didn’t mean that Chloe couldn’t tell that Pollen was disapproving of what Chloe was thinking.

“Oh, shut up --.” The kwami frowned and Chloe gave a little huff. “I didn’t mean -- whatever. Sorry. Buzz on.”

Chloe flew over to where Chat was sleeping and considered him for a minute. He looked so peaceful when he was asleep…

Well, who was she to disturb that peace?

She picked up his phone and turned off the alarm to wake him up for patrols. A finger pointed at him, she mumbled the embarrassing call for her powers (“Don’twakeupdon’twakeup ‘Sticky Situation’ stayasleeeeep -- nice.”) and smiled when he was almost instantly coated with honey. She hardened the honey around him to make sure he was properly stuck.

(The honey stopped at his shoulders, a good distance away from his face and hair -- she was pretty sure he’d kill her if she did that and, with his power, that wouldn’t be hard.)

She stepped back and admired her handiwork. 

She loved her power.

She snapped a picture and left the room.

Chloe hummed as she flew down the stairs to the main room. She crossed Chat’s name off of the list and replaced it with her own.

She made her way over to the couch and laid across it on her stomach to wait for patrols to start. She scrolled through TikTok absently, looking for ideas on what to do…

“WAIT WHAT’S GOING ON --?!” She heard Chat’s voice yell, confused, but it cut itself off. There was a beat and she heard him yell again: “PLAGG, CLAWS OUT! CATACLYSM!”

Ah. Dang. She’d been hoping that she’d already be gone when he woke up...

“CHLOE! WHAT THE HECK?!”

Did he really need to figure out it was her so quickly? Sure, she was the only one that could use honey, but come on!

She looked back at her phone for the time.

One more hour…

She saw Chat’s red face at the top of the stairs and tensed.

Well, there really is no harm in going early.


	4. Chapter 4

Chat did not know how to chat, and he would appreciate it if people stopped trying to engage him in conversation.

(And by ‘people’ he really meant Rena. Everyone else in the house seemed perfectly happy to not talk to him.)

As much as he would love to sit down with someone and talk about things, he simply didn’t know how to do it.

He was terrible with people. He wanted to blame this on the cat miraculous, but that wasn’t fair to Plagg. He’d been bad at talking to others long before he’d been given the ring.

It wasn’t entirely his fault, he’d never really been given the chance to learn.

He’d been homeschooled his entire life, after all. Talking with people his age was not a skill he’d ever really developed --.

Actually, scratch that, talking with people just wasn’t a skill he’d developed.

His family had always been somewhat separated, rich families often are, but when his mother disappeared it had gotten even worse.

His father had been slightly less distant when he’d found out that he was Chat Noir (because of course he’d found out, they had security cameras all over the property), but only for a little while. Once he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to hand over the ring his father had gone from emotionally distant to outright absent.

By Chloe’s now infamous interview, Chat had only really had his bodyguard to talk to (and his bodyguard, unfortunately, wasn’t much for conversation).

So, yeah, he had very valid reasons for not being good with people.

And the rest of the miraculous holders were decidedly not the kind of people you start off with when you want to learn how to talk to others.

The other miraculous holders weren’t perfect, but they were as close as he’d ever seen.

What was he supposed to do? Just go up and talk to them?

According to Google, yes, but that was a lot harder than it seemed. He didn’t know much about them outside of work because of the whole ‘secret identities’ thing but he also didn’t want to just talk about work because he wanted more than a straight business relationship --.

He closed his computer with a snap and rested his hands over his eyes. He could feel Plagg nuzzling against his cheek, trying to calm him down…

Chat steadied his breathing. He couldn’t allow himself to be akumatized. The one time he had been akumatized had been awful, he wasn’t looking for a repeat.

He let his hands slide off his face when he had finally managed to relax himself.

Part of him was tempted to try and befriend someone in the house, it would make things a lot easier. Maybe he’d go for Rena or Carapace… they were both nice enough...

Nope. He was Parisian, and Parisians don’t deal with their emotions.

“Plagg, claws out.”

The kwami gave him a vaguely exasperated look as he disappeared into his ring.

He hesitated at the window, then doubled back to grab his phone. He should really start gathering footage for TikTok… but what should he do?

He didn’t really have a ‘thing’, not like the others did. Carapace was the nice one, Chloe would bully you into bettering yourself, Ladybug was perfect, Rena was knowledgeable about everything, and Chat was… first?

Sure, he’d had plenty of opportunity to grow into a persona. But he hadn’t wanted that for himself. He already had a public persona when he was a civilian, he didn’t need another one. No, this was his chance to be himself and he would take it.

But now he was kind of regretting it. What should he film? What was ‘in character’ when you didn’t have a character? He didn’t know.

He tipped his head from side to side as he considered his options and then shrugged to himself. He’d think about it on the way.

It was just outside that he got his idea, because the neighbor’s dog barked at him and nearly messed up his jump to the next rooftop. He scrambled for purchase, clawed hands scraping the tiles, and caught himself on the edge of the roof.

It took a little more effort than he’d like to admit, but he managed to pull himself up.

He slowly looked down at the dog that had nearly been the death of him (not really, it was a twenty foot drop, but let him be dramatic --).

Then his eyes lit up, because that is the cutest dog ever ohmykwamilookathisstupidlittleface --!

He pulled up the camera app and started recording. The world NEEDED to see this.

~

Turns out not talking to anyone sucks.

At least when he needed to talk he used to be able to vent to his bodyguard, but now…

He didn’t even really want to talk, now that he thought about it, he just wanted to be around people.

Should he go out in public? He could do that now… actually, no, he’d rather not be hounded by fans.

Or maybe he could contact Kagami, it had been a while… no, she was probably still not allowed out.

Actually, wait, he was supposed to be in Tibet. So, he couldn’t go out without his mask.

Then what could he do…?

Dang, he was going to have to talk to his housemates, huh?

Here were his options: 1) try and get Ladybug to not hate him 2) try and befriend Carapace 3) try and get Chloe to be nice to him 4) try and befriend Rena.

(Yes, the “try and” is a very important part of that list. He was very sure none of these would work.)

Three and four were right out, honestly. Chloe had only ever been nice to Sabrina, and Chat wasn’t willing to be the girl’s servant. As for Rena, she was… too friendly, he thought, he should probably get used to people first.

That left one and two…

He tipped his head to the side.

Or or OR, and hear him out here, he could go on patrols -- wait, no, Rena had called dibs for the night.

Fine.

He climbed the ladder to Ladybug’s room/the attic and pushed open the hatch.

Ladybug fell from the ceiling. She groaned and rolled onto her back, and almost instantly a hammer nailed the area where her head had just been. She didn’t seem all that concerned about the fact that she had nearly died, though, instead pushing herself to a sitting position and smiling at him in a way that made him wonder if he’d imagined the previous five seconds.

“Need something?”

Well, a near death experience was definitely not what he had in mind when he’d thought about making it up to her, even if she didn’t seem all that worried...

Now that he thought about it, though, could he even apologize if he didn’t know what she was mad at him for?

He met her increasingly annoyed gaze and then slowly disappeared back down the hatch.

He closed the trapdoor behind himself and then headed down into the kitchen. He’d slept through lunch and dinner was ages away but it turns out that the best thing about living alone is that you can choose when you eat and sleep. Take that, Natahalie...

To his surprise, he wasn’t the only one hungry at an odd hour.

He found Carapace in full costume. This wouldn’t have been weird if Chat didn’t know that Carapace was, in fact, not due for patrols for a few more days…

And then his eyes were drawn to a faint green light and his eyebrows raised. It seemed that Carapace was using his powers to make plates… to use as actual plates? Three glowing, green hexagons were currently piled high with food.

His eyes found their way to the sink and he suddenly understood. The house had come to a silent agreement that whoever uses the last plate must wash up (and whoever filled the trash to the top had to take it out). Apparently Carapace had been the one to get set for that, but instead he’d summoned something else to use so he wouldn’t have to clean.

“You gonna tell?”

Chat tipped his head from side to side as he considered this, then shrugged. “Can I have a plate?”

Carapace groaned a little but waved his hand and a plate appeared in Chat’s hand.

Chat beamed. “Thanks!”

“Mhmm.”

With that, Carapace went back to eating.

Chat started searching the freezer for chicken nuggets to heat up. It turns out that getting your food made for you for your entire life does not make you an expert cook.

He drummed his fingers on the counter as he waited for the food to warm.

Part of him, the annoying part, was enjoying reminding him that he had intended to try and 1) get Ladybug to not hate him or 2) befriend Carapace and, hey, look at that! He’d already messed up one and two was right there…

Carapace was reading a textbook. Probably trying to get an early start on one of his classes, if Chat had to guess.

Maybe he could help…?

Carapace looked over at him and raised an eyebrow under his mask.

Nope!

He pulled his still-cold chicken nuggets out of the microwave and booked it to his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya’ll I spent eight hours on this chapter just trying to make it somewhat readable and I still don’t know if I succeeded but if I stare at this any longer I can and will cry don’t test me --


	5. Chapter 5

Pretending to be perfect would be so much easier if she was actually perfect.

Now, Ladybug absolutely knew that she didn’t need to pretend anymore. In fact, there was no way in hell that she would be able to keep up the act…

And so she’d told herself that this was fine, that she was okay with the fact that she was going to be incorporating her life as ‘Ladybug’ more into her actual life.

She’d tried. She really had. She’d worn her normal clothes for the first few days while she was unpacking…

And then she’d sat down next to Carapace on that couch to talk to him like normal humans do… only to find herself falling right back into her persona the moment she’d laid eyes on him. She’d pulled her ‘scared civilian smile’ to her face and lied about her progress on her room for seemingly no reason.

That night she went to the store to buy herself red and black dresses to match her usual Ladybug aesthetic.

They’d believe that she was just wearing the casual clothes as temps while she was settling in, probably, it wouldn’t take much to convince them that she actually acted like Ladybug at all times.

Now, she knew that this would only work for a limited amount of time. No one could be perfect forever, and the resident human disaster would have an even harder time keeping up the charade…

But she could keep it up for a while, and ‘a while’ was all she needed.

After all, she suddenly had a proper motivation to find out who Hawkmoth was (she hadn’t really cared before, things were always fixed at the end so she wasn’t all that concerned about it), and Ladybug was never one to do things half-ass.

She had to change everything about herself, though, because she couldn’t concentrate on Hawkmoth if she was constantly worrying about maintaining her facade.

She considered ‘Ladybug’s’ general traits and how to convince everyone of it:

Probably a narc, has her life together, perfect…

Yeah, that would probably be enough for now.

She started by learning the law. She found some cheap copies of law textbooks online.

(And promptly found out by reading them that many of the sites she’d used to buy them were technically illegal. She wrote out an apology in Google to the DGSI agent that might be watching her computer. Did they care? Probably not, but she figured there was no harm in being safe.)

Next was getting her life together…

Difficult, but she figured she’d be able to do it. People did it all the time, right?

… not right.

She stared at the article she found on getting your life together in a few simple steps. She was not at all fond of being called out for all her bad habits and coping mechanisms so bluntly...

Still, it was worth a shot.

She searched through her boxes and pulled out a whiteboard. She pushed a couple pictures of her civilian friends off of it, there were more important things to be doing (also the whole ‘secret identities’ thing…), and started making a schedule for herself.

Ladybug blocked out time for work, working out, and cooking/eating healthy food. It left… very little time to find Hawkmoth…

Unless…

Coffee! The ultimate ‘I have my life together’ drink AND it added a few hours to her day! It was perfect!

Speaking of perfect, she was now going to have to be perfect pretty much all day.

She wouldn’t get a break as a civilian because she worked with models and fashion designers and kwami knows that even perfect isn’t enough for them most of the time.

Even her room wasn’t safe, Chat had proved that by walking in and watching her faceplant (it was a good thing he was stupid or else that might have actually ended up being a problem).

No, the only times she could be herself was when she was 1) texting her civilian friends or 2) walking to and from work.

She was beginning to think this was a lot more trouble than it was worth…

Whatever. She was doing it anyways. Nothing, not even logic, was going to stop her from maintaining her ‘Ladybug’ persona.

~

She nearly dropped her coffee (which was mostly sugar and milk, let’s be honest) when she heard a knock on her trapdoor.

“Come in!” She said, pulling an earbud out of her ear.

Chloe poked her head through. “The akuma can fly.”

Ladybug fought the urge to groan. She looked down at the empty page in her sketchbook. Gabriel Agreste, the bastard, wanted a design by the next day and he didn’t grant extensions for akumas.

But she supposed saving Paris was slightly more important than her work --.

Wait, if she didn’t save Paris then she wouldn’t have to turn in her assignment…

She saw Tikki giving her a disapproving look, no doubt aware of where her thoughts were currently heading, and rolled her eyes.

She took out her other earbud and got up. “Alright. Tikki, spots on. Is it really a two person job?”

“Master Fu says so.”

“And Chloe says…?”

“Chlo -- I say that it’s a man made of sand. Guess how hard it’ll be.”

“Mr. Sandman, man me a sand…” mumbled Ladybug absently.

Chloe frowned a little bit. “Did you say something?”

She blinked a few times and then smiled. “Just that Master Fu needs to relax a bit more. We’re very obviously overcompensating.”

“True.”

Ladybug pushed open the attic window and they both flew out into the night --.

Wait, night? Wow, it was a lot later than she thought it was. She was soooo screwed on this deadline.

But there were bigger problems: there was a guy floating around on a pillow.

“The Sandboy just checked in! Now nightmares can begin!”

She rolled her eyes under her mask and looked at Chloe. “What does he do?”

“Creates nightmares. Obviously.”

They came to a stop a few buildings away and watched as sand slowly sprinkled down from the pillow that Sandboy was currently riding. The houses that he passed over erupted with screams.

Wow, the sand was really pretty, actually. Ladybug took note of the colors and the way it shone in the night. Maybe she could model the dress after it… she could do those colors, a bit of glitter…

Chloe nudged her shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, just thinking about what to do…” … for her assignment, but Chloe didn’t need to know that.

“Got any ideas?”

She forced herself to focus on Sandboy. “His cloud is shaped like a pillow, that’s probably the akuma. It also looks like the glitt -- sand -- the SAND is what causes the nightmares, so we should avoid that.”

Chloe nodded a little bit. “Obviously. What should we do?”

“Knock him off.”

“You’re so smart, I wonder how I’d never thought of that,” she said sarcastically.

“You ASKED me what we should do! I answered --!”

“Hello, ladies!” Said Sandboy as he came around the side of the roof.

Chloe scoffed. “Go back to saying your lame rhyme, will you? We’re in the middle of something!”

Sandboy frowned, his expression a combination of shocked and offended. His voice was much higher when he spoke next: “You think my rhyme is lame?”

“Yes.”

Sandboy looked at Ladybug for confirmation, and Ladybug just shrugged and nodded.

“Ouch,” said Sandboy. He cleared his throat and when he spoke again he’d deepened his voice: “We’ll see how lame you think I am when you’re fighting your worst nightmare!”

Ladybug and Chloe immediately jumped away, because usually people say that when they’re about to attack, and the sand nailed the roof right where they’d just been.

The two women met eyes briefly and an understanding passed between them.

“Still lame!” Taunted Chloe.

Sandboy gasped indignantly and floated after her. Chloe smiled and started flying away.

“I mean, honestly, who thought of that? What’re you ‘checking in’ to? Work?”

Sand barely missed Chloe and she took out her spinning top to get away faster.

A piece of sand hit her spinning top. Ladybug and Chloe gave pause. Would that count? Well, it didn’t matter, at least. The solution would be the same: keep running.

Chloe must have come to the same conclusion, because she shook her head and continued…

Except her strides were much slower now.

Ah. So it did matter.

Chloe whimpered a little bit.

Ladybug winced. Great. So it had taken away her powers, probably, or at least her speed. She needed to wrap this up…

She forced herself to fly faster and she launched herself at Sandboy’s back. He happened to glance back and see her, which wasn’t great as he ascended sharply.

Her hands managed to catch the pillow, and she held tight even when she got a facefull of sand.

She felt flames lap at her ankles and a strangled scream escaped her lips. Ladybug didn’t care how she went out for the most part, but it was not going to be through burning to death. She forced herself to not pay attention to the fact that the fire was travelling up and catching on the hem of her dress and it was creeping along her --!

Nope! Not paying attention!

She swung her legs back and forth a few times to wobble the pillow underneath him until he inevitably lost his balance and fell over the side.

That was the good thing.

The bad thing was that the pillow was apparently Sandboy powered and now Sandboy and Ladybug were both plummeting towards the flames far below. Ladybug flapped her currently burning wings and couldn’t help but mumble a curse when she realized that they definitely didn’t work as well when they were on fire.

As it was, she managed to slow her fall and miss the bulk of the flames by inches.

Still hurt like hell when she hit the ground, though.

She rolled around on the concrete streets to smother the flames and didn’t relax until she knew for sure that they were gone.

That done, she allowed herself to relax with a still smoldering pillow. She probably would have rested her head on it if she wasn’t somewhat worried that some leftover sand would touch her face and she’d have to deal with more fire.

Still, it was over… that was nice…

A foot nudged her side. 

She blinked the pain from her eyes and looked up at Chloe…

Chloe pulled the pillow from her weak grip and tore the case.

The akuma fluttered out of the pillow.

Ladybug forced herself to her feet before she was ready.

“Can you hit the akuma or do you need me?”

Chloe scoffed a little, and then paused. She considered for a minute before saying, “Yeah, it’s not like I just faced one of my worst nightmares...”

“Losing your powers is one of your worst -- know what? Doesn’t matter. You can’t even hit it without your powers,” said Ladybug.

Chloe frowned.

Ladybug ignored this. She pulled her yoyo from her waist and tossed it at the butterfly. The akuma gave a pitiful squeak as it was sniped out of the air.

Instantly, her pain melted away. She breathed a sigh of relief. Much better.

She slowly walked over to Sandboy, who was apparently just a kid.

Annoyance flared in her. Hawkmoth was going after kids? This one looked like a toddler!

She forced herself to relax and brought a smile to her face. “Hey, what happened?”

“I watched a scary movie and had a nightmare…” explained the kid.

She nodded a tiny bit and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Would you like one of us to take you home? We can read you a bedtime story and keep the akumas away…”

PleasesaynoIhaveworktodopleasesaynosaynosay --.

“Yes please!” The kid sniffled and wrapped his arms around her.

Noooooooo...

Chloe spoke up after a second’s hesitation, her expression thoughtful: “You were working on something before we left, right, ‘bug?”

Ladybug blinked behind her mask. “Yeah…?” Was Chloe really going to offer to help?

“Ha! Sucks! See you tomorrow!” Chloe smiled and stuck her tongue out at Ladybug, then took off.

Yeah, she should have expected that.

She rolled her eyes and looked back down at the kid. Whatever. She could go read him a story and get him to bed, it shouldn’t take long…

“Where do you live?”

“I don’t know.”

Fuck.


	6. Chapter 6

This may come as a surprise, but Rena actually wanted to get things done while she was living with everyone.

Yes, she was absolutely ecstatic about the fact that she was now living with the people she’d been looking up to for years, anyone would be in her situation…

But that didn’t mean that she didn’t want to defeat Hawkmoth. She’d been specifically brought on by Master Fu to help the heroes look for him, and she knew that better than anyone. It was her purpose as a hero, stopping akumas and making friends with the others was absolutely secondary. If she ever stopped…

Well, her power WAS illusions. She’d be the easiest to replace.

So it was her that called the meeting in the morning, demanding everyone’s presence.

Chloe was first to walk in, though that was probably because she was the only one that consistently ate a proper breakfast. She laid across the couch with her bowl of cereal.

Next, Ladybug walked downstairs, coffee mug clutched tightly in her fingers. Despite her late night (Rena had heard her crash into her bed for a quick nap while she was getting ready that morning), she looked wide awake -- thought that might just be because her eye bags would be hidden by her mask. She paused at the foot of the couch, her lips pressed together so tightly that they had almost completely disappeared.

Chloe, however reluctantly, bent her knees so Ladybug could sit down.

Ladybug took a seat with a bright smile now in place. She scrolled through her phone, sipping at her drink.

A few minutes later, Chat and Carapace came in.

I say ‘came in’ instead of ‘walked in’ because Chat wasn’t walking. He had latched himself around Carapace’s leg and fallen back asleep. Carapace, it seemed, was struggling to maintain his signature smile as he limp-dragged the hero through the living room.

“Nice anklet,” said Chloe.

“If you think it’s so nice then you can have it.”

“Huh --?”

Carapace managed to pry the cat off of him and dropped him onto Chloe’s legs.

Chat blinked a few times, green eyes wide and confused for a few seconds before he shrugged and started trying to go back to sleep.

Carapace stretched his newly freed leg and then slung himself across a nearby armchair.

“So, you called us here?” Said Ladybug.

Rena nodded. “I’d like to --.”

“Hey! Can someone get him off of me?! And if Chat isn’t paying attention then can I go back to sleep, too? I didn’t sleep as much as I wanted to last night.”

Ladybug’s eyes narrowed. “Please, Chloe, do go on about how you weren’t able to sleep, I’d love to hear about this totally unrelatable problem you are facing.”

“... no. I sense I’ve made a mistake of some kind,” mumbled Chloe. She cleared her throat. “Still, could you get him off of me? Please?”

There was a silence as she considered it, and then Ladybug shrugged a little bit and pulled Chat away from Chloe. She quickly regretted this, though, because Chat immediately changed his cuddling target to her.

“Ew. Nevermind, take him back,” said Ladybug, shoving his face away.

Chloe backed up on the sofa as far as she could without getting up. “No way! I don’t want him.”

“Suckers,” said Carapace, who was safely out of range.

“Hey, Chloe, help me throw him at him.”

“Sure thing.”

“Wait --.”

After a few minutes of passing Chat around like a hot potato, Ladybug did the noble thing and allowed him to cling to her.

Rena crossed her arms, watching the chaos unfold in front of her. Maybe she shouldn’t have scheduled this so early in the morning...

She clapped her hands a few times, not really expecting it to work, and was stunned when everyone instinctively clapped their hands in response and went silent (well, everyone but Chat, but he did stir a little bit so that’s progress).

“Everyone, we’re here to discuss Hawkmoth.”

“What about him?” Said Carapace.

“... everything…? We need to talk about what we know.”

There was a silence. Rena watched the three awake heroes eye each other warily.

“We don’t… have anything,” said Chloe after a few moments.

“What?”

Carapace shrugged. “We don’t. He’s only shown his face a few times... besides, only Chat and Ladybug have seen him up close.”

All eyes fell on the two heroes. Ladybug smiled awkwardly. “I’ve only seen him once, and I was kind of… distracted. Chat saw him all the other times, look at him.”

“Kind of hard if he’s asleep,” commented Chloe. She tipped her head to the side and then looked at her bowl. After a few seconds’ consideration she scraped her metal spoon across the porcelain.

Well, that definitely did get Chat awake, at least.

(It also got Ladybug covered in scratches and Rena and Chat into a state of shock, but he was awake, so…)

After Rena and Chat managed to pull themselves together again, she asked what he had on Hawkmoth.

Chat shifted uncomfortably. “Don’t know much, really. He only shows up when he thinks he’s about to beat me or Ladybug, which doesn’t happen often.”

Ladybug nodded. “There’s no reason for him to show up himself otherwise. He has an advantage when we don’t know who he is, why would he give that up?”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Do you not even have, like, a picture? ANYTHING?”

No wonder Master Fu had been so adamant about adding Rena to the team, this was…

Carapace raised his hand. “I have a picture, actually. The lighting is awful, but --.”

“It’s all we have, let me see it.”

Carapace reluctantly handed over his phone.

Rena looked at the screen and fought back a wince. The lighting was definitely terrible, but that wasn’t really Carapace’s fault. Flames tend to make for inconsistent lighting.

In the middle was a thick wall of green light that separated two different sides: on the left was Ladybug attempting to carry Chat and Chloe out of harm’s way, and on the right was Hawkmoth attempting to break through a barrier of plates that Carapace had set up.

Rena hesitated, kind of wanting to ask why Carapace’s first instinct in this situation was to take a picture, but she decided not to think too much about it. After all, if he hadn’t then they’d have literally nothing to go on.

She passed the phone around absently.

“Forward the picture to me, I can use it to figure out his general height and build. It’s not a lot, and probably a little outdated by now, but it’s what we have.”

“Who says he’s not wearing padding?” Said Chloe, passing the phone along without even sparing it a glance.

“No way,” said Ladybug. “With an outfit that tight you’d see it. That’s more or less what he actually looks like.”

Chloe nodded. “At least now we know why he’s doing this. I’d be a serial killer if I was bald, too.”

“We don’t know that, it could just be a bald cap,” pointed out Chat.

“Wait, we don’t even know why he’s doing this?” Said Rena incredulously.

She’d known that the public didn’t know much, but she’d thought the heroes were being secretive about their progress so Hawkmoth wouldn’t know how much they had... This was just getting ridiculous.

Carapace shrugged and took his phone back. “We know he wants the ladybug and cat miraculouses, probably for a wish, but…”

“Let’s hope he wishes for a better suit,” said Chloe.

She thought she was going to tear her hair out.

It was a wonder she didn’t, actually, when Carapace said: “Thank kwami, I wasn’t the only one that thought the color scheme was terrible.”

Or when Chat shook his head and said: “The color scheme isn’t the worst part. What’s up with the giant butterfly on his chest?”

Or when Ladybug argued that “No, the butterfly thing isn’t that bad, it’s just a little avant-garde. The REAL problem is his head, the mask looks stupid.”

But she did decide to put a stop to the debate by clapping her hands again. Everyone but Chat clapped in response (but he did go silent, so that was something).

“Everyone, shut up and get ready, we’re going to the store,” she ordered.

The miraculous holders reluctantly got to their feet…

Except for Chloe, who pouted. “Why?”

“We have nothing, so we’re going to have to make a conspiracy board.”


	7. Chapter 7

Five people. There were five people in this group.

So why could NONE OF THEM drive?!

Carapace hadn’t been expecting the rich kids to know to drive. Knowing them, they probably had chauffeurs who did it for them or whatever.

But Rena? Ladybug?!

He groaned and struggled to rub his eyes through his mask. It was too early for this.

It was a good thing all of them were fit, because the nearest Home Depot was ages away.

When they got there they decided it was best to just go in a group. Mostly because Chat was still only about half awake and someone (Ladybug) needed to push him around in a cart, but also because they all wanted to have some kind of input about how the board looked.

Carapace took out his phone.

The whole point of the ‘living together’ thing was so they could convince the public they were friends, he might as well get content that made them look like they actually got along.

The first part of the video was Chat, slumped over the front of the cart, face drawn in a sleepy smile, practically purring (actually WAS that purring? Carapace was pretty sure it was...). The camera then panned to Ladybug, who was casually throwing the items they chose at him in attempts to wake them up.

Yes, this included the giant board they were going to use to tack different things on.

No, that didn’t wake him up.

But, then, a few minutes later, he started filming again.

Chloe smiled for the camera. “Testing what can wake up our resident idiot. Trial One!”

She kicked the cart as hard as she could and sent it rolling into a wall.

Chat snored on.

Rena frowned. “Isn’t that more trial two? Ladybug throwing things was trial one.”

“Don’t rope me into this,” said Ladybug without looking up from the two different thumb tacks. She clicked her tongue and held them up for Carapace. “Glittery or not glittery?”

Carapace raised his eyebrows. “Uh… anyone gonna check on him?”

“I’ve watched him fall three stories and say ‘it’s fine’. Now, glittery or not glittery?”

Carapace opened his mouth, then shook his head. It wasn’t worth it. “Not glittery.”

“... I’ve decided you’re not allowed to have an opinion.”

“Then why would you --?!”

Rena held up a hand. “She’s right. You don’t get a say in this.”

“I --?!”

“Hey, Queen Bee, noise usually gets him up.”

“Genius!” Chloe snatched the glittery thumb tacks from Ladybug. “Trial three!”

She walked over to Chat and rattled the box by his ear. There was a shrieking noise and the camera barely caught a flicker of black before the entire cart tipped over and spilled it’s contents (including a very frazzled Chat Noir) onto the floor.

There was a short silence as the miraculous holders and the staff members who had been unfortunate enough to be scheduled for work that day processed what had just happened.

And then Ladybug doubled over laughing.

“Oh my kwami I’m so -- pftHAHAHA -- I’ll help clean up I… I just --” She giggled a little more and held up a finger for a moment as she tried to pull herself together. “One -- heheheh -- sec.”

The camera panned away from her to zoom in on Chat Noir’s pout for a brief second before it cut.

~

All the heroes helped clean up. Obviously. They were heroes.

Once they were done with their cleaning and fifty million apologies, they went back to shopping.

Chat was still in the cart but, after being woken up twice in the same day to the worst sounds his fellow miraculous holders could think of, he was wide awake.

“Guys, it’s Hawkmoth, we have to do purple!”

“No, that’s what he’d want us to do. Go the whole other way and do yellow.”

“Of course you would say that, Bee.”

“What’s that supposed to --?”

Ladybug held her hands up. “Guys, compromise. They’re complimentary colors. We can use both.”

The other three looked at her like she was insane.

Ladybug clicked her tongue and looked over at Carapace. “Are you going to weigh in on this?”

“No. I’d prefer not to get into… whatever this is.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Greeeat. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Ladybug turned to give a tired glare to the three in front of her. “Fine. Fine! I’m deciding. We’re doing purple.”

“But --!” Started Chloe.

“Nope.”

“I --!” Tried Chat.

“Shhhhhhh. It’s decided. Purple.”

There was a little bit of grumbling, but Chloe and Chat did end up putting the yellow back.

Still, the discontent didn’t last long. Partially because it’s Paris and no one is allowed to be annoyed for over five minutes, but also because they all quickly got into choosing different things for the board.

Carapace kind of hung back for this part, because he couldn’t help but cringe whenever Chat or Chloe put something in the cart without looking at the price tags.

(What if Master Fu didn’t count this as a necessary expense? He probably would, and if he didn’t one of the rich kids would end up paying, but… it was still weird to see how careless they were with money.)

Part of him wondered what people thought about their group as they made their way through the store. A group of teenagers, all dressed in varying aesthetics from ‘literally woke up this way’ (Carapace) to ‘oh wow is that child a lawyer’ (Ladybug) to ‘I don’t care about how this looks as long as you know I’m rich’ (Chloe). They didn’t really look like the kind of people who would hang out together...

They were also all wearing masks, that had to be pretty shady.

Actually, now that he was paying attention, he noticed that quite a bit of staff seemed to be watching them.

He tried to tell himself that it was just because they’d made a mess earlier.

He knew that likely wasn’t it.

Carapace instinctively pulled his hoodie lower over his face, sinking into the green fabric. He sped up a little to walk closer to his housemates.

They had stopped to look at different borders.

Chloe was frowning. “ -- which one to choose, they’re all so ugly…”

“We could make our own…?” Said Chat.

“Or, consider, we don’t waste all our time making sure it looks good?” Said Rena.

“We’re not going to get much information for a while, we might as well use our time doing something,” said Chloe.

Rena winced. “Please don’t say that.”

Carapace raised his eyebrows. That was odd. Why was she so determined, anyways?

He shrugged it off. Maybe she just wanted to question Hawkmoth. He wouldn’t put it past her.

His eyes slid over the group to Ladybug, who was occasionally glancing at something and opening her mouth, only to close it again and look away.

He followed her gaze to a bunch of different sized purple, paper butterflies.

Oh. Did she want them and just didn’t know how to say it?

He walked over to the butterflies and checked the price. After a few seconds’ deliberation he made his way down the aisle to look at the construction paper’s prices. Hm… time versus convenience...

He looked up to ask which one would be better and cringed internally when he realized everyone had disappeared.

How did they disappear? They were so loud…

But that wasn’t his problem at the moment.

He pulled down the container of purple butterflies down and started walking.

He tried to ignore the stares of staff members as he wandered the aisles.

“Bonjour!”

Shit.

He turned around and brought a smile to his face as he looked at the lady that had come up to him.

“Salut!” He said brightly, and he tried not to take too much pleasure in the way she winced. It was his go to passive-aggressive move to say ‘Salut’ at this point, to imply that the person judging him was on the same level. Was it petty? Yes. Did it work when it came to trying to figure out if it was something innocent or not? Also yes.

“Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

“No thank you, ma’am, I’m just looking for my friends,” he said.

Should he avoid eye contact and bow his head a little? Would she think that was suspicious? He hadn’t done anything, but he also didn’t have any identification on him which wouldn’t look good if she was going to question him…

“Can I accompany you to help you find them?”

Ah. So she was going down that kind of route?

“Not necessary,” he tried.

“I insist.”

“No thank you. I’m fine.”

“A kid like you shouldn’t be left alone...”

He gripped the packet of paper butterflies so tightly that it dug into his palms.

“I can handle myself, thank you. I’m Carapace,” he said.

He fought back a cringe, but it had been necessary. If he stayed like this too long he could get akumatized, and he really didn’t need that right now.

“And I’m Ladybug,” she said, unimpressed.

Yeah. Fair enough. That was kind of hard to prove. Should he show her the kwami hiding in his pocket…?

No, reaching towards his pocket was decidedly a bad idea. She was way too wary of him for that, who knows what she’d think.

He pulled a fake smile to his face. Fine. If he could get this over with quickly he might be able to get through this without getting akumatized.

“Okay, ma’am, help would be nice, I guess…”


	8. Chapter 8

Chloe really didn’t know how they’d lost Carapace.

They’d talked about borders for a while and he’d been perfectly fine keeping out of the conversation, and then they’d gotten distracted by Ladybug and Rena saying that fairy lights weren’t necessary, and then he was gone.

… maybe they’d lost Carapace when they were debating exactly how important fairy lights are to the aesthetic. Who knows.

Still, it had been a bit weird when she had casually turned around and not seen the turtle following along behind them.

Had they left him behind? He walked kind of slow, it was entirely plausible… or had he wandered off on his own free will?

One of those was a problem. The other was not.

Chloe pulled out her phone and pulled up the hero group chat.

Queenie: Hey, Carapace, where’d you go?

She doubted she’d get an answer. No one under forty ever has their ringer on --.

Chat’s phone dinged and Chloe rolled her eyes. Someone needed to revoke Chat’s Teen Card.

Chat’s eyes flicked over his phone and then a frown graced his face. He looked around.

“Oh. You’re right. He’s gone…”

Ladybug blinked and looked up. “Should we try and find him?”

“I mean… he is an adult…?” Said Rena slowly, though she didn’t seem all that sure what to do either. The two self-appointed responsible ones started debating quietly.

(Chat used this chance to drop some fairy lights into the cart and hide them under some things. Good for him.)

None of them were all that concerned, of course. Carapace was just as capable a hero as the rest of them, and what kind of trouble could he really get into at Home Depot?

Still, they eventually split up to look for him. After all, they were ready to check out. They’d get whatever Carapace had found, pay, and leave. Simple as that.

Except things never were simple for them.

Chloe frowned as she came upon Carapace and… someone. She was a lot older than him. She hoped he wasn’t trying to chat the lady up.

She pulled out her phone to alert the others.

Queenie: Found him by the paper stuff still.

She leaned back against the nearest wall and started scrolling through her phone absently. It was fine that he was talking to someone, Chloe could wait until he was done…

Wait, no, something was wrong. She lowered her phone a little to look at them.

They were talking in relatively pleasant tones, but there was a tenseness in both of their shoulders that gave Chloe pause.

“A kid like you shouldn’t be left alone…”

A kid like him?

Her eyes narrowed.

“I can handle myself, thank you. I’m Carapace.”

She scoffed lightly. Really? Was he really pulling the Carapace card? Lame. Only she could pull stuff like that.

“And I’m Ladybug,” responded the lady, apparently just as unimpressed about the attempt as Chloe was…

But Chloe couldn’t help but be uncomfortable about the interaction. Something was deeply wrong, she just didn’t quite know what.

“Okay, ma’am, help would be nice, I guess…” Carapace caved.

She frowned a little at that. Honestly, how was he a hero? So meek and quiet, sometimes she found it odd that he would even face the akumas.

But, hey, if he wasn’t going to stand up for himself then she’d be glad to do it for him. He was the only tolerable one in the house and she wasn’t just going to let people walk all over him.

She pulled her mask off (hers was really only for aesthetic purposes, to make them look like a matching set, anyways) and set it in her bag and fluffed her hair a little. There. Now she should look like she usually did on TV.

She marched over, pulling an annoyed frown to her face (this wasn’t hard). “Hey, idiot, I looked everywhere for you.”

The lady’s eyes went wide as they landed on the mayor’s daughter and the only out hero of Paris.

“You’re actually… I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t know!”

Carapace’s forced smile dropped into a more sincere, almost apologetic smile. “It’s okay, ma’am. I wouldn’t have believed me, either.”

Chloe, however, didn’t soften in the slightest. “Oh, so now that you know he’s Carapace you’re sorry?”

“Chloe, it’s fine.”

“Is it? What were you going to do if he wasn’t Carapace?”

The woman looked uncomfortable as she mumbled another apology.

Chloe was about to go off on her some more, but a hand on her arm made her stop.

She turned to look and saw that all the other miraculous holders were there, too, and they looked to be bracing themselves for a fight. (Ladybug had even transformed, though it was hard to tell the difference.)

She squeezed her eyes shut. She hated everything that was going on in that moment, but she hated the idea of being the first to get akumatized since moving in even more.

So, she pulled herself together. Once she was sure that her emotions had dulled to a low enough hum that Hawkmoth wouldn’t detect it, she sent the woman a cold look.

“I hope you have a safe weekend, mademoiselle.” She settled for mild passive-aggression. Paris was full of that at this point. She was sure the woman caught on.

She whipped around and pulled Carapace away by the sleeve of his hoodie.

“You really shouldn’t let that kind of stuff slide.”

“It’s fine,” he said calmly. “I’m used to it.”

“That’s even worse!”

He rolled his eyes a little and waved to Rena and Ladybug as they got closer. “Hey, guys, it’s time for my favorite game! Do you think she was racist, classist, or just wary of teens?”

Rena laughed a little. “Did you SEE her? Definitely racist.”

“Well, if she was a classist she’d have to think you were pretty low. She’s working at Home Depot,” said Ladybug after a second’s thought. “Could still be a teen thing, though.”

“No way! She singled him out.”

“That makes sense.” Carapace gave Chloe a shrug. “See? It’s normal.”

Chloe was steadily getting more and more horrified. Why were they so… casual about it all? Carapace was joking? Rena was laughing? Even Ladybug seemed a little amused? Even if it actually was normal for them, it definitely shouldn’t be…

Her eyes met Chat’s and she was glad to find that he also seemed to think what was going on was absolutely insane.

But could they really say anything about how they were dealing with it? They weren’t exactly in a marginalized group.

No. Probably not.

“Why’d you run off, anyways?” Said Rena.

Whether the change in subject was intentional or just her natural need to know everything, Carapace seemed happy to indulge her. He held up some purple butterfly cut-outs. “We can use this for the board.”

“Oh. That would be cute,” said Chat slowly.

Ladybug had gone a little red behind her mask, and if anyone else noticed they didn’t feel the need to comment.

“Ready to go?” Said Rena.

Ladybug sifted through the things a little to make sure they had everything they’d need, much to Chat and Chloe’s dismay. When her eyes landed on the fairy lights she blinked a little…

And then she pressed her lips together and continued searching.

Chloe and Chat beamed.

“I think we have everything. Let’s get out of this place.”


	9. Chapter 9

Chat laid back in his bed but, for once, he wasn’t tired.

He was set to go on patrols that night, so he’d pretty much done everything he’d wanted for the day earlier. He’d gotten all his sleep, watched every video, finished his skin and hair care routines…

Only to find out that, hey, he didn't actually need to do that because Hawkmoth had chosen today to akumatize someone.

So patrols were out of the question. Hawkmoth had a recharge time of a few hours it seemed, but he usually didn’t do multiple akumas on the same day. They were always less powerful when he did too many in quick succession.

Well, at least he could go fight the akuma, right?

Wrong.

Because it was quickly brought to his attention that he actually couldn’t go, because the akuma was Mr. Pigeon and he quite famously had a bird allergy.

So the three women had all headed out (Carapace had stayed behind to finish an essay) and Chat had been left behind.

He scrolled through TikTok for a while. The app was definitely watching him, because almost all the content on his For You Page was animal videos…

Not that he minded.

But he could only handle so much cuteness at once, so that only worked for a few minutes.

Next, he went on Twitter to see what everyone was currently arguing about. That was bound to be entertaining…

Unfortunately, it seemed everyone in Paris was more concerned with the akuma than anything else at the moment. He didn’t need action shots of his housemates or to know more about Mr. Pigeon’s new plan to take the birds to space or whatever so he can… feed them? What?

The only other notable app on his phone was Instagram, but he wasn’t about to go on that. He was supposed to be in Tibet at some fancy private school, if people saw he was active he’d have to come up with answers to the millions of questions he’d inevitably get.

Now what…?

He pushed himself up to a sitting position with minimal groaning and attempted to run a hand down his face despite his mask.

Screw it. He was bored. He’d go bother Carapace.

He shuffled two doors down. He knocked twice…

There was a scrambling sound before he got a yell to come in.

When Chat actually did so, he found Carapace fastening his mask to his face. He was sitting at his desk, the area around him littered with crumpled pieces of paper.

“Salut?”

Chat batted away some with his feet as he made his way towards Carapace. “Salut. Chloe would kill you if she saw how much paper you’re wasting.”

“Paper is biodegradable, isn’t it?” Said Carapace with a slight grin.

“True.”

“... is there a reason you’re here?”

Chat didn’t answer, instead he slung himself over Carapace’s lap and laid there like a giant housecat. Which he pretty much was.

Carapace wasn’t even all that surprised.

All of the miraculous holders were well aware that the miraculous had side effects for them. They seemed to have attributed his constant need to be in contact with others as one of the side effects.

Chat knew that wasn’t the case, he was just Like That, but who was he to tell them they were wrong?

Carapace reached down and gave his hair a tiny ruffle and then went back to work.

Chat pulled out his phone again and started scrolling idly through Twitter for something to do (also he was kind of curious about the space pigeons now). The sound of Carapace’s pencil on the paper and his tiny sighs and curses were the only noises in the room for a while…

His eyes slid over the room. The bed looked untouched, there were a few empty energy drink cans strewn about, but other than that...

“So, wait, is homework literally all you do when you’re in here?”

“It’s all I have energy for outside of working out and patrols most days. Why?”

Chat rolled over to look up at him. “It’s just… you’re so…” He tried to think of a way to phrase it nicely, but when he couldn’t he settled for: “boring…?”

Carapace frowned a little. “And you’re so annoying!”

Chat flinched. As most people do when someone insults them.

His face softened and he groaned a little. “... sorry. That wasn’t… I’m just a little stressed out about school. This paper is due at midnight and I don’t know what to write.” He cracked a half smile and motioned to all the wads of paper. “As you might have been able to tell.”

He relaxed as well. “Yeah. I hear school is stressful.”

“You hear…?”

He hesitated. They were supposed to keep most things about their lives as civilians a secret, but… there was no way he could figure out who he was from this piece of information, so: “I was homeschooled.”

Carapace raised his eyebrows, thought about it, then nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Huh?”

“You have sheltered rich kid vibes.”

“... thanks?”

“No problem,” he responded easily. He set his pencil down and stretched as much as he could with someone still laying across his lap. “So. You had to have had a good education. Have any tips for my essay?”

Chat yawned and closed his eyes. “Depends. What’s the subject?”

“Film history.”

“... I don’t know anything about that, I don’t think, sorry. Ladybug or Rena might, ask them when they get back.”

Carapace laughed a little. “I don’t need information, if I did at least then I could just look it up, I just don’t know how to… write?”

He blinked his eyes open and then looked at him. “I can help if you just need to get your thoughts in order.”

“Really?” Said Carapace, his face lighting up.

Chat groaned a little as he stretched out. “Sure. Let me get a whiteboard.”

“We have paper…?” He said, watching his housemate get up and start walking out of the room.

“Shhhh, it’s for the aesthetic.”

Chat walked to the fridge and grabbed the whiteboard and markers from it.

He took a quick picture of the board so he could put everything back on it when he was done. Rena had apparently been doing some calculations on it. He remembered, vaguely, that she had mentioned calculating Hawkmoth’s height…

Holy crap. That’s tall. Sure, Hawkmoth was tall, but was he really THAT tall?

He shook his head slightly and erased, then returned to Carapace’s room. He smiled as he held them up for him to see.

“Tada.”

“So… what are we doing?”

“You --” Chat pointed a marker at him. “-- are going to talk about everything you know on the subject. I --” He pointed at himself. “-- am going to put everything in categories and we can go from there.”

Chat very quickly discovered why he was having so much trouble getting anything down. Carapace was… let’s call it ‘passionate’. The moment he started speaking his words tumbled out so quickly that Chat had had to scramble to pull the cap off of the marker so he could start sorting.

But, really, it always is nice to hear someone ramble about something they’re passionate about. Chat had to fight an urge to just watch and listen to Carapace as he talked about how ‘absolutely insane the textbook is for not going that much into eastern theater when there’s so much to talk about about kabuki theater alone --.’

Two hours and many struggles to fit so much information into such a compact space later, Carapace had run out of things to talk about.

“... is there a page limit?” Said Chat as he tossed over a water.

Carapace caught it without even really looking and took a few sips before speaking again: “Uh… yeah. Five pages max. That’s… my main problem.”

Chat looked at the board. What was on there alone was probably two pages in itself and that was just the general names of the topics…

He tipped his head from side to side and then circled a part of it. “Behold. That’s probably around four, and then you can do a bit of extra plus an introduction and conclusion.”

Carapace looked like he was going to cry.

“Are you… okay?”

He sniffled and wiped his eyes. “Where have you been all my life?”

“Uh… being homeschooled?”

“Oh. Right.”

Chat slung himself over Carapace’s lap again as he got to work. He scrolled through his phone for a while.

He jumped a little when he got a text. Still not used to that.

He opened the message.

Ladybug: We’ve washed off and changed clothes so your allergies won’t be irritated. Heading home now.

Kittychat: Thanks :D

He got left on read by three people, but that’s fine.

“They’re on their way back.”

Carapace grinned. “Wow, they beat Mr. Pigeon? Shocker!”

When Chat laughed a little, Carapace’s grin got a little more mischievous.

“Seriously, though, imagine losing to Mr. Pigeon. Couldn’t be me.”

“I am allERGIC --!”

He was cut off by Carapace’s laughter and, after a moment, he joined in.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence…

Then Chat got an idea. A small smirk made its way onto his face.

“You said that your account was going to be showing the world that we’re all normal people under the masks, right?”

“Among other things…?”

“Want to mess with the others and get some footage?”

“You complete me. C’mon.”

Carapace snatched his phone off his desk and they headed down to the living room to prepare.


	10. Chapter 10

It was a long few hours.

Not the akuma part. No, the akuma was probably the quickest part of the day. Ladybug and Chloe dealt with Mr. Pigeon every few days, he wasn’t a problem. Rena had come along and helped take all the civilians to safety, so it had been even faster than normal.

The next few hours were spent decontaminating so they wouldn’t accidentally kill Chat or something.

They’d stopped by the mall to get some clean clothes and gotten mistaken for cosplayers.

(Chloe had taken out her phone to film all the people coming up to compliment their cosplays after a while, and Ladybug had decided she needed to get that video on her phone. Especially when Chloe had caught someone going up to ‘correct’ a piece of Rena’s outfit. The stunned look on her face as she accepted the critique had been PERFECT.)

They’d gotten some clothes and then headed to a gym to shower off what they could.

It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but they ended up spending ages. She wished there was a miraculous that could create portals…

Wait, could she create a teleporter with her Lucky Charm? Would that work? She made a mental note to test that out at some point.

But, until then, they had to walk everywhere.

She yawned and leaned a little bit more into the arm that Chloe had slung around her shoulders. “Why does he even use Mr. Pigeon at this point? He’s pretty much useless.”

“Maybe he just wants to see what he comes up with. Like, really, he was going to take the pigeons to SPACE?!” Mused Chloe, grinning.

“Without helmets?” Agreed Rena.

“Yes, Rena, THAT’S the most insane part of that plan. It definitely would have worked out if he’d given the pigeons spacesuits.”

Rena didn’t seem all that offended despite Chloe’s sarcastic tone. “Fair enough. And are we not going to talk about how he tried to take the Eiffel Tower with them?”

“Kwami, I wouldn’t have even stopped him if he hadn’t tried to take the tower,” said Chloe, shaking her head. “Honestly, it’s such a pain to deakumatize him once a week.”

Ladybug nodded enthusiastically. “You’d think the police would just let him feed the pigeons after a while to help prevent akumas but nooooo.”

“Well, you should still be grateful that he’s so consistent.”

She blinked and looked at Rena. “Sorry?”

“He’s the whole reason you got your miraculous,” she explained her reasoning.

“... right,” said Ladybug.

An awkward silence fell over the three of them after that. Luckily, they were at their house in no time.

Rena opened the door and then stopped cold.

Chloe and Ladybug exchanged confused looks as they ducked around her to see, only to freeze up as well.

She didn’t really know what to see when she walked inside, but the boys filming a thirst trap wasn’t it.

The boys stopped short at the slight squeak of surprise that Rena made.

And then it was just a staring contest. All five of them were frozen in shock.

Ladybug’s face began to burn and she slowly turned to hide it in Chloe’s shoulder.

The movement seemed to snap everyone out of it.

“Woah! What are you guys’ fitness routines? I’d love to try them out!” Said Rena excitedly.

Chloe, however, looked unimpressed as she gently rested her hand on top of Ladybug’s head. “That isn’t even all that attractive, you know. Most women are attracted to hands and eyes.”

Everyone paused again at that, and Chat tipped his head to the side. “How do you know that?”

“Well, for one, I am a woman,” she said with a scoff. “And for another, my miraculous gives minor telepathy.”

“IT WHAT?!”

She shrugged as much as she could without disturbing Ladybug from her hiding. “It’s nothing major, I can mostly just sense general feelings… it’s whatever.”

Ladybug finally pulled back; she’d finally managed to get her face to relax. She frowned at Chloe. “How does telepathy have anything to do with being a bee?”

“What do ‘lucky charms’ have to do with ladybugs?”

Yeah. Fair enough.

She leaned into Chloe again, yawning into her hand a little. “What was that about, anyways?”

“Wanted to film you guys’ reactions,” explained Carapace. “We only flustered one out of three, which kinda sucks, but it was still fun.”

The women exchanged skeptical looks at his explanation.

“But did you film what you were doing?” Asked Rena with a sly smile.

“Yeah…? So they could all see what we were doing…?” Said Chat.

Chloe scoffed a little. “Mhmm, sure. Just admit you wanted to do thirst traps. We won’t tell anyone.”

“I will,” said Rena.

Chloe stepped on her foot to make her be quiet.

Ladybug smiled a little and shook her head. As much as she wanted to join in on the teasing, she had a reputation to keep up. She slipped out from under Chloe’s arm and headed to her room for a cup of coffee.

When she came back downstairs, they were still arguing about whether or not Carapace and Chat had just been doing it as an excuse to do thirst traps.

“Ladybug! Thank you! Tell them that that wasn’t what we were doing!” Tried Carapace.

All eyes turned on her and she looked around slowly. “I… can’t say for certain either way.”

“That’s Ladybug for ‘I’m not going to give my opinion because you’ll think less of me,’” said Chloe with a victorious gleam in her eyes.

Ladybug couldn’t even deny it. Dang. Way to call her out, Chloe.

She pressed her lips together and took a seat beside Chloe and she couldn’t help but smile when the other raised the blanket for her to get under.

“We’ve worked together for years!” Complained Chat.

She hummed thoughtfully, then shook her head. “If we’re going by that logic then I’m siding with Chloe. We work together more often.”

Chloe cheered a little. “Ha! Suckers! We got Ladybug on our side!”

The boys pouted when Ladybug didn’t say anything to dispute the fact.

Chat cleared his throat and did a totally masterful attempt at changing the subject: “Yeah, well you guys’ clothes suck. So there.”

This struck a chord with the resident fashion designer. “Next time we won’t change so we’ll look good for you while you’re choking to death on the floor, then.”

“Wait --.”


	11. Chapter 11

Rena was running out of time.

(To make TikToks. She wasn’t dying for anything except content.)

She’d figured that she would do Q&A type things, it was close enough to the content she’d used to make but far enough away that no one would suspect anything about her identity. It was perfect!

But the other heroes were… let’s say ‘less than eager’ to divulge much information to her. Especially not when they were being filmed.

Ladybug had pulled her aside one day to explain why.

“Rena…” She reached out and gently rested a hand on her shoulder.

Rena knew what that meant, she’d gotten it enough back when she was just a civilian. For just a second, she was thrown back to the first time one of her family members had died, to the way she had promised that she wouldn’t come back until she had her sister safely in her arms...

But she knew that it couldn’t be like that. Ladybug didn’t know who she was just like Rena didn’t know her identity. It was nothing that serious.

“We can’t give much information to the public. Hawkmoth could be watching.”

A fair point. It hurt, though.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “So we don’t show him our weaknesses, it’s not that hard.”

“We have to assume any information could be used against us.”

Rena frowned. “By that logic we can’t upload any content…?”

“We can’t upload any content of substance, no. Messing around in a store is fine. Videos of animals are fine. Anything beyond that is… potentially problematic.”

The idea of style over substance was foreign to the hero. Her whole brand used to be substance over style, done with a phone camera but close enough to fights for people to actually get a glimpse of the heroes in action. What was she supposed to do?

“What’s your niche, then?” Said Rena, hoping to get an idea.

“I was going to do some videos on mental and physical wellness.”

Yeah, no. That was a very ‘Ladybug’ thing to do, Rena probably couldn’t encroach on that in any way. But… what else was there?

Ladybug opened her mouth like she was about to say something, and then she shook her head and disappeared to her room.

Rena watched her leave in silence, and then fell back on the couch. She rested her hands over her eyes, something that was very uncomfortable due to the weird fabric of the mask on her face, and tried to think.

Ladybug had been fair. They already had enough of a gap between the information Hawkmoth had versus the amount they did, they shouldn’t make that worse… but then what was the point of them doing social media accounts?

And, she mused, why hadn’t Ladybug just told Master Fu her concerns?

Something wasn’t adding up, but she didn’t exactly know what.

The reporter in her was itching to find out. She didn’t want to invade Ladybug’s privacy, especially not when the other already seemed wary enough around her, but it was hard to just let go…

So, what could she do?

~

She grumbled as she went to Carapace’s room, not even bothering to knock as she walked in. It wouldn’t matter if she did, her miraculous made it so that most people’s eyes and ears slid right over her unless she actively worked to get them to notice her.

He was in his hero costume, though that wasn’t surprising considering he’d gotten back from patrols only a few minutes ago.

Carapace jumped a little in surprise when she came to a stop by his desk and looked up from where he was booting up his computer.

“Salut?” He said slowly.

“Salut! I need help.”

He raised his eyebrows a little and then shrugged. With a tiny wave of his hand, a second chair made of a bunch of different plates appeared behind her.

She took a seat and crossed her legs. “Everyone talks to you, right?”

“I guess…?”

“So do you know what everyone’s doing for their TikTok accounts?”

“I’m going to get footage of us acting friendly, Chat is filming animals he sees on patrols, Ladybug is ‘promoting mental and physical wellness’, and Chloe…” He sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what Chloe’s doing, but she started laughing maniacally when I asked so I’m not eager to find out.”

Rena pouted a little bit. Great, so everyone’s taken all the good and easy ideas. What else was there?

“I don’t know what to do with my account. Ladybug says I can’t do interviews and stuff because Hawkmoth could use stuff against us.”

Carapace briefly looked confused, and then understanding crossed his face. “Well, I can tell you that no one here would disagree with that.”

“I know, I know, it makes sense,” she sulked, resting her head on her hand. “But then what do I do?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Being the ‘smart one’ is kind of your thing.”

She frowned at that, but brushed past it. “I don’t really care about my image, it’s not that important to me --.”

“It should be.”

Her gaze shot up to see his expression was uncharacteristically serious.

He seemed to realize this, too, because he cleared his throat and brought a smile to his face again.

“I know you’re new, so let me give you some advice: keep your life as a hero and a civilian as far apart as you possibly can. Since we’re everyone’s therapists and all, it’s kind of depressing when you start thinking about everything the civvies tell you when you’re off the job.”

Carapace reached out slowly, giving her time to draw back, and rested a hand on top of her head.

“So, lean into your image. Lean into it so hard you become a parody of yourself. It’s better for everyone that way. Trust me.”

She reached up and pulled his hand off, frowning deeply. “If you think that then why did you agree to live with us? Why are you taking videos of us all being friends?”

“Well, I live with everyone because it was a good solution for some concerns I had about college… not that we really had a choice. Master Fu wasn’t going to give it up.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched. “And I’m taking videos of everyone because it’ll help when we need to do our whole therapy thing. People talk more when they feel close to you.”

Rena stared at him in shock. That was… surprisingly cold and calculated for the supposed ‘nice’ hero. Then again, by his own admission, he didn’t even see himself as that nice of a person.

Were all the other heroes like that? Lying about their personalities for the sake of the public or their mental health? And, if they were, were they keeping up the act while there too or did they consider living in the house their new ‘civilian’ life?

She pushed herself to her feet abruptly, startling Carapace a second time. She crossed her arms.

“I’ve got an idea for what to do. Thanks.”

“Huh? But I didn’t --?”

She was already gone.

~

Despite the temptation to disobey that she was pretty sure wasn’t entirely her fault, Rena had gone to Ladybug a few days later with a proposal:

“I still want to be an informant to the people.” She saw Ladybug begin to protest, so she rushed to finish the rest of her sentence: “Obviously, I won’t be giving them anything of substance, but it could help to make them feel closer to us as heroes.”

Ladybug couldn’t turn down the reasoning. It was what Carapace had listed as his own.

And, to her delight, Ladybug seemed to agree because she clicked her tongue and nodded.

“Fine. What’re you planning to do?”

“Simple stuff. A house tour -- making sure to blur and hide anything that could give Hawkmoth our location -- and then after that keep them updated on the news.”

There was a silence as she considered this. Then her head tipped to the side. “What do you mean by ‘news’?”

“Nothing major. Have you ever seen a drama channel on YouTube? Stuff like that.”

“... fine, but you should run your videos by everyone involved before uploading.”

Rena nodded her understanding.

~

She started with the house tour. If she was going to do this, she needed to gain their trust. A few normal videos, and then she’d start trying to slip the public information about the heroes’ true personalities.

Rena didn’t want to expose them to Hawkmoth, and especially didn’t want to expose their families, so she really was going to try to respect most of their privacy. For this reason, she did tell them all when she was going to do the house tour so they could hide anything that could be used to figure out their identities.

She started with the shared rooms like the kitchen and living room, but she brushed past all of that quickly since she knew that wasn’t what they’d be interested in.

Her room was first. It was the same size as every other bedroom in the house, but it felt tiny and cramped. There was a dresser, a desk, a bed, three different bookshelves, an end table… well, let’s just say that she’d brought more stuff than necessary. The room wasn’t exactly neat, it seemed that it would buckle under the weight of Rena’s knickknacks if she wasn’t careful, but it wasn’t necessarily dirty either; everything had its place.

She decided to put the more boring rooms in the middle for the good old watchtime. Ladybug’s room was fine but her personality was a bit dull when it came to this kind of thing, and Carapace’s personality was fine but his room was boring, so...

She was off to Ladybug’s room. She climbed up to the attic and finally figured out exactly what Ladybug had been working on since they’d moved in. Apparently she was trying to make an indoor jungle gym using the support beams on the ceiling. It actually looked like a pretty good workout, though maybe a little unsafe. Beyond that, the room was rather full. Random pieces of furniture (mostly chairs) were strewn about, loaded with a precarious amount of fabrics.

She found Ladybug hunched over a sketchbook on her bed, swaddled in blankets despite the fact that the attic was actually pretty warm.

She looked up at her and blinked. “Oh. Now? Okay.” She escaped her blanket prison with minimal struggling and then gave a short tour of her room.

Rena pointed to a divider on the other side of the room. “What’s behind there?”

Ladybug looked over and a blush spread across her face. “I don’t have a closet, so that’s where I put the secret identity stuff for now. Don’t go back there.”

For some reason, Rena thought she was being lied to. However, she couldn’t just go back there when Ladybug had just said that it would reveal her identity, so she just nodded and said: “Gotcha. Thanks for the tour.”

She moved on to Carapace’s room next. She pushed the door to his room open and sent a smile and a wave. All his textbooks were safely stashed out of sight and he’d cleaned up the normal mess of old snacks for the video, which somehow made his room feel even emptier than usual.

“Here we have a wild Carapace in his natural habitat. Though, why this is what he chose as his natural habitat is beyond me.”

He laughed good-naturedly. “I don’t need much.”

“I can see that.”

He smiled. “Ridiculous! Utterly Ridiculous!” He said, doing his best impression of Chloe.

Rena cleared her throat, and then did a perfect impression of her voice.

Carapace’s eyes widened. “Chloe?”

She tried not to laugh, and instead nodded and continued her impression: “Yes. I’m secretly Chloe. Rena asked me to take her place for this because she was tired.”

He didn’t seem sure whether or not to take this as a joke, and she gleefully left the room.

She moved on to Chloe’s room. It was… somehow both bright and dark in there and this threw Rena off more than she’d like to admit. While most people would take Rena for the hoarder (and they’d probably be right to), Chloe also seemed to have some hoarding problems; the walls were taken up with different luxury items from jewelry to handbags; the floor was littered with different plants at seemingly random intervals.

Chloe looked up from where she was tending to some plants with the help of a few bees (wait, was there an actual BEEHIVE in there?).

“I like your… bees…?”

Chloe snickered. “Thanks. They don’t like you, though, so I’d suggest you leave.”

Rena was a little offended that the bees didn’t like her, but she didn’t need to be told twice.

She headed to Chat’s room next.

When she opened the door she had thought that he wasn’t there. The lights were off outside of a TV which, upon closer inspection, she realized someone was playing a video game. Huh. She turned on the light.

Once she was actually able to see, she was taken aback by how dirty it was. Clothes littered the ground; the bed looked like it hadn’t been made since they moved in; there was a grand piano but it was currently being used as a trash can for old snack bags.

“Did you forget that I was doing a house tour today?”

“Nope,” said Chat from somewhere in the filth.

“Oh… okay…”

The video cut.


	12. Chapter 12

Carapace stared at the two different files on his computer, his mouse hovering between them.

What should he do? Should he force himself to finish his schoolwork tonight so he could have the next day off once class was over? Or should he work on a video for TikTok while he had motivation?

Or he could do both…?

He made a brief trip down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and his eyes narrowed when he saw that the coffee machine had mysteriously disappeared, as had all the coffee pods.

Chat hated coffee, but Rena and Chloe both accepted some when offered --.

Oh, who was he kidding? He knew the culprit.

He made his way up to the attic and he found Chloe and Ladybug cuddling under some blankets (or, rather, Chloe was cuddling Ladybug, Ladybug was sketching something and listening to music). It wasn’t even a particularly cold day, but he had long-since lost the need to question most of the weird things that miraculous holders did. It was probably a miraculous thing, it was whatever.

His nose picked up the distinct smell of coffee and he caught sight of the mug Chloe was using to warm her hands. Or maybe she was holding it for Ladybug. Or both. Whatever.

Ladybug didn’t even look up from her sketchbook.

Chloe did, though, barely lifting her head off of Ladybug’s shoulder to meet his eyes.

“Bonjour,” she said. Detached and formal, but it was better than her usual habit of just… rudely jumping into conversation without saying hi. He would take it.

“Salut,” he said. “Where’s the coffee?”

Chloe hesitated, then nudged Ladybug. She blinked behind her mask and pulled an earbud out of her ear.

“Mmm?”

“Carapace wants coffee.”

Ladybug looked a little put out but pointed her pencil at the desk, where the stolen coffee machine now resided.

He nodded and made his way over. He reached into the jar of coffee pods and then paused.

“I went shopping yesterday. How many has she had?”

Ladybug, who hadn’t yet put her earbud back in, flushed red. “An amount. Who are you, my dad? Leave it alone.”

“You’re going to die --.”

“No, I won’t. I’m monitoring my dosage.”

He opened his mouth to argue, and then decided it wasn’t worth it. “Whatever. I’m taking the machine back downstairs.”

This got a pout.

The blanket moved. He heard Chloe gasp a little as if she’d been jabbed in the side. She gave Ladybug a slight glare before rolling her eyes and sticking her lower lip out as well.

Now he was getting two pouts.

“Don’t give me that. Just be glad I’m not cutting you off entirely.”

This got Ladybug to shape up. She quickly put her earbud back in and went back to sketching.

Chloe looked between them and gave an exasperated huff, then went back to attempting to steal her friend’s(? Carapace was kind of confused about their relationship, if he was honest) body heat.

He took the machine down and poured himself a cup, then went back to his computer.

… damn. He’d taken too long and now his motivation to edit footage for TikTok was gone.

Whatever, he thought as he took a sip of his coffee, at least he could get his schoolwork done.

~

Okay, so, mistakes were made.

He groaned and rubbed his face sleepily as he detached his face from his desktop the next morning, his phone alarm blaring that it was time to wake up. The caffeine had kept him up until five in the morning. He’d forgotten that Ladybug had gotten the highest dosage she could last time. Damn it.

He slowly reached for his phone and pulled up the screen to turn off the alarm.

His eyes landed on the time.

He had fifteen minutes to get across Paris for class.

Not possible for him as a civilian, but Carapace…

Wayzz gave him a tired look, as he usually did when he was about to use his miraculous for personal gain, but he ignored it as he scooped everything on his desk into his bag.

He sniffed his hoodie and decided it was fine.

He did apply some extra deodorant, though. Just in case.

“Shell on,” he said, slinging his backpack over his shoulders just before he transformed and jumping out of his window.

Being the ‘nice hero’ was a bit inconvenient when he needed to get places quickly.

He had to stop every few rooftops to wave and smile at people lest he run into a chimney or walk right over the side of the building in his distraction. Beyond just his image, people are getting akumatized over anything these days, so it was necessary that he be nice to them. He was just grateful no one thought to ask for a picture or something.

But he managed to be on time. Barely. He detransformed in an alley near the school and sprinted the rest of the way to class. The door was pushed open a minute before it was due to start. However, in his haste, he tripped over the sill. He faceplanted.

Great, he thought bitterly as he rubbed his sore cheek. At least no one would suspect him to be a hero after that.

He walked over to an empty seat and plopped himself down, fighting the urge to sink into his hoodie as eyes followed him.

Thankfully, class was starting, so everyone was quickly distracted by the lecture.

It was about theater in the east for once! Cool!

A mere twenty minutes into class, the TV flickered to life and there was a collective groan as a few people leaned forward in their seats to see if the akuma was even worth heading to the nearest shelter for.

He barely even looked over. The people that had leaned forward had settled back into their seats pretty quickly, so it probably wasn’t anything major.

He smiled a little to himself. The best part of the new arrangement of everyone living together was that they all knew each other’s schedules. This meant he didn’t have to worry about being called upon during class --.

His phone vibrated in his bag.

Nope, he decided. He had just imagined that. Surely, they knew that he wasn’t able to do anything --.

His phone vibrated again. And again. And again.

The people around him were sending him annoyed looks.

He cursed in Arabic and pulled it from his bag.

Kittychat: It’s a water one and no one has any powerups. :(

Queenie: Carapace.

Foxyou: Spam him lol

Queenie: You’re right.

He scowled as his phone started blowing up thanks to the three of them.

Capot: im in class

Kittychat: Oh. Sorry. :(

Queenie: Don’t be sorry! We need him!

Foxyou: If we spam him enough he might get kicked out

Great. Now his phone was blowing up again, courtesy of only Rena and Chloe this time.

“Monsieur…” The professor began, looking through his attendance sheet momentarily before apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort to find his name. “Would you like to share with the rest of the class?”

He sighed a little. Fine. Guess he’d do his stupid job or whatever.

“Sorry, my friend is new to Paris and she’s freaking out about the akuma. It’s her first one. Can I go check on her?”

“Sure. Just remember to do the homework. It’s due tonight at midnight.”

He nodded that he understood and reluctantly gathered his things. Within a few minutes he was out of class and transformed and on his way towards the body of water the akuma had claimed.

It just HAD to be a water one.

Hawkmoth probably did it on purpose, too. He loved being an inconvenience, Carapace wouldn’t put it past him to have figured out he was in a rush thanks to his running around that morning and deciding it was time to make a water akuma.

He sighed for what must have been the millionth time that day as he spotted the giant tentacle monster in the river.

Sure. Why not?


	13. Chapter 13

Chloe sat on the bridge overlooking the river, her feet swinging absently as she watched bubbles streaming to the surface.

She’d love to help.

No, really. On top of just being bored out of her mind, she could also rub it in the other miraculous holders’ faces. That would be fun.

But, alas, things never worked out for her. Master Fu hadn’t whipped up a new batch of powerups quite yet, and even if he had she doubted that he would have given it to her of all people.

(Well, in all technicality they could go underwater and not die. The suits gave them some protection. But have you ever tried punching someone underwater? It’s quite the disadvantage.)

So, she settled for eating some ice cream and watching.

It was kind of fun, if she was being honest. She watched with bated breath, waiting for the occasional moments where Carapace would be thrown out of the water and hit a wall so hard it collapsed on him. He noticed her the third time this happened and now made a point to throw chunks of building at her every time.

Someone was in a bad mood. Who knows why. Couldn’t have anything to do with her, surely.

After about twenty minutes of fighting the buildings started mending themselves and she smiled as her ice cream reappeared in her hand.

Carapace jumped out of the water, a young woman in his arms. Once they were safely on land he detached her from the oxygen tank hidden in the shell on his back. If some of the water on her face wasn’t from the river, neither of them were going to say anything about it.

He walked over. Chloe thought he was just giving her some space to cry (the person looked foreign, if their confused frown was anything to go by), but then she saw the annoyance in the slight set of his jaw and she groaned mentally. Great. She was going to get chewed out again.

“Thanks so much for your help, Chloe --”

“Queenie or Queen Bee when we’re on the job, remember?”

He raised his eyebrows before shrugging and continuing on like he hadn’t heard her: “-- were you here to just watch and laugh?”

She scoffed. “No, that was just a fun little bonus.” She handed him the newly reformed ice cream. “I came here to take the akuma home. Didn’t know she was foreign, though.”

That made him pause, his previously annoyed expression quickly changing to a more confused one. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanted to help me? You?”

“... yeah?” Said Chloe, crossing her arms over her chest. He was clearly looking for some sort of ulterior motive in her eyes, and she figured she’d give him one because she didn’t know how long she could stand to have him look stunned about her doing something mildly nice. “I feel like I owe everyone one for getting us all into this mess.”

He didn’t seem fully convinced (was he really that surprised that she was a decent person? She was a hero! It was her job!), but he let the subject go.

“Thanks, Queenie.”

She smiled a little. “Your ice cream is melting.”

“Damn it --!”

She snickered and walked over to the foreigner, who was just now coming out of their shock.

“Hey!”

The foreigner stared at her for a few minutes before whispering a: “What happened?”

“Um...”

What was the official spiel? Dang. She wracked her brain, trying to remember anything from the many hour long session where Master Fu had drilled it into all of them. Maybe she shouldn’t have slept through it.

“You got turned into a monster by an evil butterfly because we have a magical super terrorist.”

The lady stared at her for a few seconds before laughing and shaking her head. “Okay, what actually happened?”

Chloe gave her a shrug. “I don’t know. You fell in the water and my friend got you out.”

She jerked her head towards Carapace, who was casually eating the ice cream on a nearby bench and not going to class like she’d expected but whatever.

The foreigner nodded. “Yeah, I am a bit clumsy. Why’re you dressed like that?”

Chloe looked down at herself and hesitated. Usually her dad wanted them to say that they were filming a movie so they would still get tourists, but Nadja Chamack wasn’t there to make it sound realistic (no one wants to watch still water on the news for 10+ minutes), so…

“My friend and I cosplay.”

“Oh! Cool!” Said the foreigner. “Thanks for helping me! Hope your outfit didn’t get too damaged!”

After Carapace assured her that it was fine, she relaxed. They gave her directions to her hotel and watched her leave.

He cracked a grin once he was sure the foreigner was gone. “Maybe there’s something in the Paris air that makes people stupid. I still can’t believe anyone actually falls for that.”

“The alternative is believing there's a guy who’s going around with evil butterflies. I’d believe anything over that.”

“America has superheroes and stuff, too, y’know.”

“Yeah, but the heroes are adults and the villains actually show up.”

He sighed. “Lucky them.”

Chloe couldn’t help but agree.

He polished off his ice cream. When asked, she turned away so he could detransform and put his mask on. She didn’t know why he bothered detransforming when he was still wearing a green hoodie as a civilian. What was the point? Did he really want the sleeves back that badly?

Whatever. She detransformed as well.

“Ready to head home?”

“For someone who was so annoyed about leaving class, you don’t seem all that eager to go back to it,” said Chloe, crossing her arms over her chest as they started on their way.

He raised an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. “The excuse I used isn’t one that would let me go back. Or, at least, if I did everyone in class would think I was a terrible friend.”

She nodded her understanding.

“Thanks for trying, though.”

She chanced a look back and scoffed a little at the soft smile on his face. “Don’t expect anything like that again. I just owed you.”

The look melted into a cheeky grin. “Well, actually, you didn’t actually do anything to help, so don’t you still owe me?”

“... no? I gave you ice cream. Debt gone. That's how it works.”

“Okay, but it was previously eaten ice cream.”

“Like you can tell the difference.”

He rested a hand over his heart. “I happen to have a very refined palette, thank you very much.”

“I’ve seen you eat pickles with peanut butter.”

“You’ve dipped a burger in honey!”

“I have an excuse,” she reminded him. “What’s yours?”

He was silent for a moment. There was no excuse for pickles and peanut butter.

“... you still owe me.”

“No, I don’t!”

Would you believe me if I said that they continued debating this the entire twenty minute walk home?

And maybe even a little bit afterwards?

~

Chloe glanced out the window. It was nearing October, and…

“Hey, guys, we need to use these vegetables before they go out of season.”

Chat looked up from where he was watching a cartoon. Rena stopped doing pushups.

(Ladybug was on patrol and Carapace was doing homework in his room. Unfortunate, because now both of the people assigned the role of ‘group impulse control’ were absent.)

“What even uses a lot of vegetables?” Rena said.

“Salad,” said Chat with a knowing nod.

“Ew,” said Chloe, shaking her head. She stared at everything they had, a tiny frown playing on her lips, then snapped her fingers. “Salsa uses vegetables, right? Let’s just make a bunch of that.”

There were a lot of vegetables, but hey! More for them.

Rena went back to doing pushups. “Sure. Just make sure it isn’t white people stuff. Try asking for the recipe in Spanish.”

“Smart. Chat, can you look it up? I have dirt on my hands.”

Chat groaned as if she were asking him to do some great task and then stretched for his phone on the coffee table. He refused to leave the couch, so he ended up with his feet hooked over the arm of the couch for support as he stretched himself to the phone. He broke into a wide grin when he finally managed to grab it and then pulled himself back onto the couch.

It was probably more effort than just getting up a bit to grab it then sitting back down, but whatever.

He started typing, then he paused. “You guys know the Spanish word for salsa?”

Silence stretched between them as the two women looked at each other, trying to gauge whether or not he’d actually just asked that. Chat was steadily sinking into the couch as if hoping it would swallow him whole.

“The… the spanish word for salsa?” Repeated Rena.

“It -- I -- shut up!” He said. “Do you want salsa or not?”

Chloe snickered. “Sure. Can I see the recipe?”

He showed it to her and she squinted for a minute at all the words. Were some of them similar to French words? Yes. Was she completely sure about anything? Not at all.

She briefly considered asking Chat to translate everything for her, but she couldn’t. Not after she’d laughed at him for temporarily forgetting that salsa is salsa. He’d at least known the word for ‘recipe’ in Spanish, he had that over her.

Whatever. She’d guess. She’d had salsa before, surely that was enough to figure it out.

She started picking vegetables and after making sure to wash them off properly, they were set to start cooking.

Rena raised her eyebrows at the sink full of vegetables, opened her mouth to say something, snapped it shut. Her lips curved into a fox-like grin.

“What is it? I don’t like that smile,” said Chloe. She could feel that Rena was getting mischievous, she just couldn’t figure out why.

“Ah, don’t worry,” said Rena, waving her off as she pulled on an apron.

This worried Chloe more, but whatever.

“We don’t have a food processor or a blender, what do we do?” Said Chat, his eyes scanning the recipe.

“Just cut them real thin. It’ll be fine,” said Chloe with a vague wave of her hand.

She had a lot of confidence for someone who had never been in a kitchen in her life.

… It went great. Obviously.

The resident rich kids actually had been trying to be helpful, which kind of makes their failures worse in a way.

Chloe had been cutting tomatoes with the dull end of the knife for ten minutes before Rena had thought to look over and turn it around.

Chat had thought that it would be a good idea to chop jalapenos before onions and had rubbed jalapeno juice in his eye while trying to stop crying, which had not helped.

While Chat was attempting to get that out of his eyes without actually touching them, Chloe had taken up cutting onions. It was harder than she’d thought it’d be. The onion kept falling apart no matter how hard she tried to hold it together.

Chat had come back, eyes irritated and red, and started trying to cut tomatoes. This would have been fine if he could actually see the seeds enough to get them out.

… it was at this point that Rena had made them go sit down so she could just cook without a disaster happening every few seconds. She may have liked mayhem, but she actually wanted to eat some of the food they were working so hard for, so it was in her best interest to get them to just sit down at the kitchen table and watch.

A good while later Rena walked over. “I finished. Want to see?” She asked, her voice a little wobbly, as if she was on the verge of laughter.

Chloe squinted suspiciously at her before looking at the counter.

Ah. So that was what Rena’s mischievous smile had meant earlier.

They might have made about seven mixing bowls full of salsa (actually, it was more pico de gallo if you consider consistency, but that’s neither here nor there).

Chat groaned quietly. “Well, I hope Ladybug and Carapace really like salsa.”

“We don’t.”

The three problem children looked up to see Ladybug and Carapace leaning in the doorframe. Ladybug looked like she was fighting back her amusement, Carapace just looked tired.

Ladybug managed to pull herself back to her normal formalness as she crossed her arms over her chest. “According to the internet, salsa goes bad in about a week. I do expect that you won’t waste any.”

“Please help,” said a slightly distressed Rena. Their diets were SCREWED.

“Nope. This was your mistake,” said Carapace.

Oh, so NOW he has a backbone?

Ladybug gave Rena a cold look. “You should have told them.”

“... it was my miraculous’s fault.”

“Unfortunate,” said Carapace, unamused. He looked at the bowls on the counter and shook his head with a sigh. “Guess I need to go buy some tortilla chips for everyone.”


	14. Chapter 14

The next day was The Day.

It had been a full month since they had moved into the house.

Tensions had settled somewhat, people had more or less grown used to each other’s presence… but, on that one particular day, the five of them were on edge.

It was the day to begin posting.

Chat bit his lip, scrolling through all the different videos he had taken on patrols. Should he just go in the order that he had taken them in? That would certainly be easier than any arbitrary system he put out.

Then again, if he actually figured out a system it would make what he was doing feel like it had more effort. Out of all the account themes that he knew (Chloe was still refusing to answer any questions about hers), his definitely required the lowest amount of effort.

It fit him, but still.

He decided to schedule a little bit. It would go dogs, then cats, then more unusual animals, then repeat.

There. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Hopefully, Fu wouldn’t take issue with it --.

He tore through the skin of his lip and hissed in pain. He dropped his phone on the bed next to him and brought his hands up to stem the bleeding until he found a tissue.

He walked to the mirror and snickered to himself when he saw his reflection.

Thank the kwamis he wasn’t home anymore. His dad would have thrown a fit about him ‘ruining’ his perfect face.

The door opened and he looked over to see Chloe. “Bonjour --.”

He groaned a little. “Bonjour. You’re not taking tonight’s patrols from me, but you can come along if you want.”

“What? No. I need more time to edit a video for my account so I’m going to be announcing the start of our accounts.”

“You had a month and you’re still not done?” He teased, tossing the bloodied tissue in the trash.

She scoffed. “Not like I owe you an explanation, but I have an hour of footage to go through and edit down to a few minutes at most.”

Ah. Yeah. That would be hard.

He followed her to where everyone had congregated on the couch.

Well, actually, Ladybug and Carapace were the only ones on the couch, Rena was standing behind it, peering over the other miraculous holder’s shoulders as they scrolled through their phones.

Rena looked up when she heard their footsteps and gasped. “What happened to your lip?”

“I lost a fight...” … with his own mouth, but that was beside the point.

Carapace raised his eyebrows. “You lost a fight without leaving your room?”

Rena’s lips twitched into a mischievous grin. “Who knows, with all the stuff in his room something could be living in there and no one would know.”

He fought the urge to sink into the fabric of his turtleneck (which he now felt weird wearing considering the actual turtle in the group never wore turtlenecks). “Shut up.”

“Nice comeback,” commented Carapace.

“Thanks,” he muttered, dropping down onto the couch beside him and resting his head on his shoulder.

Chloe hummed as she set up her phone to take a video of them all and then she paused, looking at everyone. “Costumes? Since this is the announcement video?”

Ladybug set her phone in her pocket. “Sure.”

“Oh, what if we start in costume and then we detransform?” Said Carapace.

“Why?” Questioned Rena.

“For the drama. Obviously.”

No one bothered to reply to that, instead they all called their kwamis to transform.

Chloe pressed to start recording and then waltzed over to take a seat on Ladybug’s lap. To Ladybug’s credit, her face remained neutral. They all knew she blinked behind her mask even if they couldn’t see it.

Rena snickered a little behind her hand.

Ladybug’s skin flared bright red. There it was. She’d finally finished processing.

“Was… was the spot beside me not good enough?”

“Nope!” Chloe said brightly before turning her attention to the camera. “Hello, Paris… and others, though I don’t know why you’d bother with our accounts if you aren’t Parisian. We’re the miraculous team!”

They went in a line from left to right introducing themselves and then detransforming to show off their civilian clothes.

“Now, you might be wondering: what’s going on?”

“A good question. Not even we really know,” Chat muttered.

(Carapace, the only one close enough to really hear, was now smiling more sincerely.)

“We’ve started TikTok accounts that we’re going to be maintaining until we defeat Hawkmoth. Why’d we decide to do this?”

Everyone’s gazes briefly pulled away from the camera to send Chloe looks that varied from slight exasperation (Carapace) to amusement (Rena).

“No reason! Just convenience!”

Chat rolled his eyes a little.

Chloe went on to explain what each of their accounts would be about, except...

“You forgot your own niche, Queenie,” said Ladybug gently.

“I didn’t forget.”

They waited for her to go on and say what she was going to be doing, but she didn’t.

The other miraculous holders exchanged wary looks.

“All their accounts are going to be in the caption. Follow them!”

The video cut.

~

A day passed, but no one was really getting picked up by the algorithm, it seemed.

They had all convened in the living room again to discuss what to do.

Chat had the most followers, which wasn’t a surprise considering he was just posting cute animals.

Ladybug actually had quite a few as well. A few of them were actual Parisians, but most just seemed to be random French speakers who wanted to get their lives together. Good for them.

Everyone else was having trouble getting their videos seen.

Chloe was taking this especially hard. She had flung herself over the sofa and buried her face in the cushions.

Ladybug didn’t seem all that concerned about the possible impending akuma as she sat down on the arm of the couch. “It would probably help if you had actual content,” she commented.

The other barely lifted her head to send her a glare.

Carapace sat down in the armchair with some chips and salsa. “Maybe we should just use all the trending tags to get people to see us.”

“We could tag our videos as cosplay and then see how long it takes them to figure it out,” said Rena, grinning as she stole some chips.

(Carapace sent her a tired, halfhearted glare but apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort to keep his food away from her.)

Chat wasn’t really concerned about all of this. He sat in the window, smiling as the sun beamed down on his back. “I don’t know. If we want we can get some blogger to report on it.”

“If we do that one, how about the Ladyblogger? I’m pretty sure she’s the most popular one,” offered Ladybug absently. “And her blog has the option to send in stuff anonymously, too.”

Chloe pushed herself up to a sitting position, apparently done sulking. “Nope, she’s been inactive for a few months. Said something about her schedule getting too hectic, I think.”

“Oh! Is that why I haven’t seen her around?” Said Chat, trying to hide his relief. “I thought I’d done something to offend her or something.”

He noticed, vaguely, that Rena was now bright red. His brain struggled to figure out why and then it clicked. The Ladyblogger stopped showing up a little while before Rena had appeared… she must be feeling left out!

He gave her a tiny smile. “There’s still other blogs, though, so we could try that.”

“You know, I always thought it was weird that the Ladyblogger had always chosen Ladybug for her name when Chat was there first,” mused Carapace.

“Do you know any good puns for Chat Noir that has to do with blogging?” Said Ladybug, a little defensive.

“Fair.”

“She also had a different name originally, she just changed it when Ladybug came on because of the pun,” muttered Rena.

Ah, so Chat had been wrong about Rena’s feelings about the Ladyblogger. Clearly she was just a fan of her work. That made sense, that seemed like the kind of content she would enjoy --.

Chloe was the one to pull everyone on track: “Who cares? If she’s been inactive no one’s checking her page, so we need a new plan.”

The five of them lapsed into silence as they considered the options.

“I could get Nadia Chamack to report on it?” Offered Ladybug.

“No one under thirty really watches the news. Wrong demographic,” Rena pointed out.

Chat hesitated slightly before raising his hand to get everyone’s attention. “Can’t we just use Chloe’s dad? I mean… everyone follows him to find out what insane thing he did for his daughter this week.”

Chloe sent him a glare.

“No offense,” he added quickly. “That’s definitely on the people of Paris for their… judgementalness and tendency to --.”

“Chat, do yourself a favor and shut up,” advised Rena.

“Okay.”

There was a moment as they all thought about it.

Chloe pulled her phone out. She dialled a number and there was hardly a beat before she smiled and said: “Daddy! Hi!”

There was a collective wince that the mayor’s daughter opted to ignore.

“I was wondering if you could -- oh. Thanks! I’ll text you the info to tell everyone, then...”


	15. Chapter 15

Ladybug woke up the next morning to her phone going off like an alarm. She groaned and slowly reached to her bedside table, gently nudging away fabrics in search of her phone. She found it, eventually, and tapped her finger on the screen repeatedly in search of the snooze button, but it didn’t seem to be working.

She grumbled to herself, snatching the phone off the table and looking to turn it off…

Only to realize that it was a good hour before she’d set her alarm to go off for her meeting with Audrey Bourgeois. She rubbed her eyes tiredly as she watched another round of notifications come in.

Ugh. That’s what she gets for turning her ringer on at night in case her friends had nightmares. She silenced her phone and fell back in her bed.

After ten minutes of staring at the ceiling and attempting to trick her brain into thinking she was asleep, she reluctantly pushed herself out of her bed. Phone in hand and blanket around her shoulders, she shuffled downstairs for a cup of coffee.

She waved to Chloe absently when she saw her in the kitchen making a bowl of cereal and got a hum in response. That was their entire conversation, though. Chloe always seemed to know when exactly it was a good time to tease her or not without Ladybug ever saying a word.

Maybe she should have figured out that Chloe was some kind of minor telepath.

Whatever.

She scrolled through her phone as she waited for her pot of coffee to finish.

The Parisians on TikTok were going wild.

There was a group freaking out about Chat’s account (because it was cute, but also because he might actually be a dog person considering that was the first thing he’d uploaded). Carapace’s video was full of comments analyzing their group dynamic or pitying the people who had been on shift at the time. Rena’s account had thousands of people screaming about having actual information on the miraculous holder’s daily lives for once and people attempting to use the footage to figure out where they were living. Chloe’s video had people speculating on what she would be doing or commenting on their day-to-day outfits.

And Ladybug’s…

It was full of people saying things along the lines of “of course Ladybug would have a lifestyle account”.

Part of her was kind of offended. Sure, her persona was definitely different than her and if she knew a person like ‘Ladybug’ in real life she probably wouldn’t be all that close to them, she’d made it that way on purpose… but still. It kind of hurt.

Then again, there was another part of her that was tempted to sing. Her ruse was working! She had accurately guessed what would be in character for her persona! Nice!

She poured herself a cup of her quickly cooling coffee and headed up to get properly dressed for the day.

Ladybug couldn’t help but be a little anxious as she changed from her red and black pajamas into a completely different red and black ensemble. Her mind wandered to all the messages she was getting about how consistent her persona was.

If she didn’t give her persona any kind of depth, how long would people keep falling for it?

She didn’t know. She was out the door in minutes and heading off to the park where Audrey had wanted to meet, the prototype of the dress she’d made for a ball in the United States in her hands. She had to remind herself constantly that, even if the stuff she’d used for the prototype was just there to simulate the real thing and wasn’t all that expensive, she still needed everything to be intact when she gave it to Audrey.

She was a little distracted during the meeting, her mind on what to do about her persona, so it was a good thing that Audrey’s only complaint was that the prototype fabric was a little coarse. That could be fixed.

The persona thing…? Not so much.

Rena was already suspicious, Ladybug could see it in the way her eyes narrowed ever so slightly whenever she let little things slip through.

(Thanks for telling her that everyone has personas, Carapace, now she had to be even more careful.)

She forced herself to relax. There wasn’t anything to gain from worrying about people figuring out just how fake she was outside of a possible akumatization.

No. Instead she would concentrate on something she could fix: Hawkmoth. If she figured out his identity they could beat him, and then she would never have to worry about personas ever again.

The moment she got home she walked over to the conspiracy board. She glared at the millions of closeups of every part of Hawkmoth’s body.

**~Want to skip some calculations? Here’s your chance! I nerded out a little, sorry~**

Hawkmoth was about 230cm tall in costume. That’s what Rena had found out through calculating his height in comparison to some of Nino’s plates in the photo, but Ladybug had (stupidly) offered to do the math to see how tall he would be without the miraculous stuff...

She knew the man’s shoes gave him a little extra height than most normal shoes would; she’d seen them up close, they were practically heels.

She spent literal hours sitting down with her computer at the kitchen table, a cold look on her face.

(Thank the kwamis for Chloe, because every time someone came near she would quickly come up to play interference. Ladybug didn’t know if she was doing this for their sake or hers, but either way it was appreciated.)

She scrolled through page after page of shoes, trying to find a model that looked close to the fashion disaster Hawkmoth was wearing.

Did she have a theory for the type of shoe they were? Yes. Was she going to just go with that? Of course not. She was Ladybug! Ladybug doesn’t GUESS --!

Maybe she’d been pretending to be Ladybug for too long. She made a mental note to go out with friends as a civilian sometime.

Still, it took until midnight to find a model that was similar enough for her to feel comfortable using it as a base. She printed out the picture and put it beside the picture of Hawkmoth’s shoes and nodded to herself. Great. His shoes added about 3 centimeters to his height.

Now onto the next part of height calculations.

Miraculi gave everyone extra height.

She didn’t know for sure if it was a flat rate or proportional, so she went out on the town, looking for some kind of measuring tape -- the type she used for work wasn’t long enough for a person’s actual height. She managed to find a place unfortunate enough to be open past midnight and she and the person checking out her item shared ‘I wish I was dead’ expressions.

It was here that she dragged everyone out of bed to measure their heights as civilians versus as heroes (without shoes, obviously).

They were clearly very annoyed by this, but it was nearing three o’clock at this point and she had spent an entire day looking at shoes. The look on her face was absolutely murderous. They opted to just quietly do what she said so they could go back to sleep as soon as possible.

5 centimeters. Everyone grew by 5 centimeters.

She wasn’t quite sure why this happened, nor did she really care. It was just important for her calculations.

**~Calculations over~**

So he was anywhere from 215 to 225 centimeters. Unreasonably tall, really. There could only be a few people of that height in Paris.

After doing some searching she figured out that there were probably about 5 people in all of Paris that were that height.

She just had to… find them? Somehow?

Whatever. She should also do some quick things to distinguish Hawkmoth from the others. She grabbed an extra sheet of printer paper and started writing things down.

A semi-muscular build, possibly bald, stupidhead, terrible fashion sense...

She fell back on the couch for a quick breather.

She was getting a headache. What was it from? The caffeine? Dehydration? Was she clenching her teeth? Who knows.

Ladybug pulled her phone out and checked the time…

Four-thirty.

She had time to finish that sketch for Jagged Stone before their eight o’clock appointment. It would be close, though.

She changed while she waited for her coffee to brew (How many pots had she had since yesterday? Four? Five? Whatever, it was probably fine) and then got to work.

She looked up a while later when Chloe walked down for breakfast. It was seven now, then. She would need to leave soon…

“Kwami, Ladybug, you look awful!”

“Thanks,” she said, her eyes falling back to the sketch. It didn’t have enough… yeah, that was the end of the sentence. It was too plain, but she couldn’t seem to --.

She felt hands rest over her cheeks and she looked up to see Chloe standing over her. “You need to sleep.”

“I need to get to an appointment.”

“I WILL use Sticky Situation if I have to.”

Ladybug wasn’t impressed.

“Pollen, buzz on.”

Ladybug blinked at the miraculous holder in front of her and then gasped. Of course! She’d forgotten accessories! No wonder it felt empty!

Kwami, she really was tired, huh?

She put some quick accessories down, careful to make all the items kind of tiny so Jagged wouldn’t be able to tell the ideas weren’t fully fleshed out yet, and then smiled at Chloe as she got up to leave. “Thanks, Queenie. I gotta go, I’ll sleep later.”

“But --!”

She was already gone.

The meeting went well. Yay. She kept her job.

She walked home, happy to just be done with that really long day --.

She randomly chanced a look in the window as she passed and winced when she saw Chloe waiting for her on the couch. She was far too tired to deal with a lecture. She transformed and flew into her room through the window.

… now what? Should she sleep?

Nah. She had patrols that night. Might as well just stay up through it all.

She yawned into her hand and headed down to Rena’s room. She might as well tell her what she’d figured out.

She knocked her head against the wooden door instead of her fist in an attempt to wake herself up a little and smiled when it opened.

“You look…”

“I’ve been told. Anyways, I’ve finished doing math and stuff. Come look.”

Ladybug grabbed Rena’s arm before the other could even say anything and pulled her down to the kitchen where she’d done the calculations.

Rena looked over everything for a few moments before her eyes widened.

“... hey, quick question, why does it say he has a ‘condom-head’?”

That got Ladybug awake. Her eyes found their way to the list of attributes she’d written while sleep-deprived.

Her eyes went wide with horror.

Because there, in handwriting that was definitely hers, were the words ‘stupid-looking condom-head’.

Fuck.


	16. Chapter 16

Rena honestly hadn’t known what to think when she’d opened the door to see Ladybug looking to be on the verge of death.

Ladybug hardly slept, everyone was aware of that -- they could hear her above them moving around at almost all hours -- but apparently she was reaching her limit. Rena could actually see the bags under her eyes… which shouldn’t be possible, they’re all wearing masks, but there they were.

“You look…”

She trailed off, unable to even think about saying the words ‘You look like shit’ aloud without feeling a twinge of guilt.

Ladybug didn’t seem all that phased, though. “I’ve been told. Anyways, I’ve finished doing math and stuff. Come look.”

A hand locked around her wrist before she’d even thought of a response and she was pulled from her room with a quiet cry of surprise. If Ladybug registered the sound, she didn’t say anything. Rena glanced at her kwami and jerked her head in the direction of her room wordlessly. Trixx seemed to understand and went inside. She heard the creak of her door closing as she was pulled down the stairs.

She momentarily considered asking Ladybug if she was okay, but when she got to the board and saw all the work that she had done over the past day she figured that she already had her answer.

Rena looked over the calculations to make sure she didn’t mess up in her sleep-deprived state and then her eyes found their way to a sheet of paper that was labelled ‘Distinguishing Attributes’ --.

What the fuck?

Well… she wasn’t necessarily WRONG but it was… an odd thought to have… especially for her of all people...

“Hey, quick question, why does it say he has a ‘condom-head’?”

Ladybug snapped to full alertness and her eyes scanned over the document. Her face drained of color for a moment before suddenly flaring red.

Rena wasn’t looking at this, though. She looked down at Ladybug’s hands.

Rena had been getting better at sensing when she was about to be lied to over the past month or so. She didn’t know if the side-effects of her kwami were finally starting to show up or if she was just starting to better understand the other miraculous holders and their tells, but either way...

Ladybug’s fingers worried the hem of the red blouse she was wearing. Whatever she was going to say, it was a lie.

“No one is perfect when they’re sleep-deprived.”

“True. But not the reason. Try again.”

The other’s shoulders sagged and she slumped down in a chair, resting her hands over her eyes. “Damn it.”

“Wh… what?” Said Rena, barely resisting the urge to try and clean out her ears.

“I said ‘damn it’.”

Yeah. That’s what she’d thought she’d said. Still weird to hear that out of her mouth.

Ladybug finally pulled her hands away from her face to look at Rena. “If you promise not to tell anyone I’ll explain.”

“Depends on what you tell me.”

She considered this for a minute…

“Fine. You might want to sit down.”

Well, those were a worrying few words. She obliged, though, pulling a chair out and perching herself there.

“I’m sure you know by now that we all have personas we use for work -- except Chat, I think, which kinda sucks for him but that’s neither here nor there,” Ladybug started, the corners of her lips drawn up in the barest of smiles before she seemed to remember what she was talking about and her expression sobered. “Well… ‘Ladybug’ as you know her doesn’t exist. At all.”

Rena wasn’t sure how exactly to respond to that. She settled for: “I’m sorry, what?”

“I don’t know how to explain it much better than that. My persona is being the ‘perfect one’, right? Obviously people aren’t perfect, and I’m… not at all close. All the uptightness and everything is pretty much the opposite of how I am, actually.”

She was quiet for a moment before resting her head in her hands so she could process what in the world was happening.

Sure, Carapace had already told her that everyone was faking on some level... but he’d made it sound like they were all taking pieces of themselves and then exaggerating them, not straight up faking an entire personality --.

“Wait, you told me not to tell anyone. Does no one else know?”

“No. And they won't,” said Ladybug, leveling her with a cold look.

Rena considered it. That glare was… dangerous. Ladybug still had a perfect track record on everything that she knew of and she didn’t want ‘murdering Rena Rouge’ to be on her list of accomplishments.

But she shook her head. “No. You need to tell them. This isn’t healthy. You can’t fake your personality all day without breaks, your mental health will plummet. I don’t want to fight an akumatized Ladybug, thanks.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “I have a job.”

She couldn’t help but be skeptical about this claim, but how could she prove otherwise?

“Do you work in customer service?” Asked Rena.

“... you can’t ask me that.”

“Don’t worry, that’s all I’m going to ask about it. Answer the question.”

Ladybug frowned but eventually did so: “I mean… kind of --?”

“Then you can’t act like yourself at your job.”

“... I can’t even argue with that. Fine. You caught me: I’m acting all day. But it’s fine.”

“It’s not. I’m telling them. You should at least be able to be yourself in your own house.”

There was a few seconds of silence as they stared each other down. Neither of them were particularly eager to give in on this one…

Ladybug eventually slumped forward on the table and covered her head with her hands. Her voice was barely discernible because of the way her face was squished against the table, but she managed to piece together what she was saying:

“I’m too tired for this. Just… let’s keep it a house secret. Please?”

She didn’t like it, but she nodded reluctantly. Then she realized that Ladybug wouldn’t be able to see her from the angle she was at and she quickly said: “Sure.”

She got a vague wave to say ‘go ahead then’ and Rena tried to quell her excitement as she pulled her phone out.

Foxyou: Guys apparently Ladybug has been faking her personality and she’s actually way more relaxed

Capot: cool

Chat: Weird. But at least she’s comfortable enough to tell us that now and hopefully she’ll be comfortable enough to act like herself sometime soon. :D

Rena decided that he didn’t need to know that this wasn’t exactly Ladybug being comfortable enough and more her messing up and having no other choice than to confess.

Foxyou: Yeah

Queenie: I was wondering who was going to be the first person to figure it out.

Before she could even start to type out all the questions she had, Chloe had sent another message:

Queenie: Wait. If you figured it out that means she’s home. Where is she?

Normally, Rena would be all for just lying about where Ladybug was. However, as she looked at the person in front of her that she was pretty sure had passed out with her head against the table, she decided that, just this once, she’d do the right thing.

Foxyou: Kitchen come get her

Chloe stormed in not even a minute later, only to still when she saw Ladybug had fallen asleep. She huffed a little and picked her up, mouthing ‘thank you’ to Rena and then taking her to bed.

Rena was feeling like going to sleep herself, honestly. That had been a lot to process. She rubbed her face and then shrugged to herself. She didn’t have anything to do that day. She headed up after them.


	17. Chapter 17

Carapace frowned as he patrolled with someone at his side.

It was weird to go on patrols with someone else, if he was being honest. It wasn’t unheard of or anything, Chloe and Rena were both perfectly happy to go on patrols with others, but it wasn’t something that Carapace found himself doing unless Master Fu made him.

That wasn’t what had happened, though. Ladybug had missed her patrols for the previous night because Chloe had turned off all her alarms and neither of them had any nights off until the next week…

So they were going out together.

It was kind of awkward, if he was being honest. He didn’t know how to talk to her, not really. He’d already been kind of unsure what to talk about when he had known her persona because they were so different… but now that he knew that that wasn’t her actual personality, somehow, it was even harder to talk to her.

He glanced at Ladybug out of the corner of his eyes as they hopped from roof to roof.

This was a mistake, he ended up missing his footing and it was only thanks to his plates that he didn’t fall four stories.

(He still fell an entire story before he caught himself and his plates weren’t exactly soft, but it was still better than splattering on the pavement.)

Ladybug hovered over him with a slight smile threatening to make its way onto her face.

“You alright?” She asked, offering him a hand up.

The green glow of his plates made her look like a ghost in the nighttime darkness, and the flying didn’t help, but he forced himself to ignore this as he took her hand.

She carried him up to the roof. He could have technically made the jump, but if she was offering the help he wouldn’t say no. Besides, everything still kind of hurt.

“I think I’m dying,” he joked, getting rid of the floating plates with a vague wave of his hand.

The smile widened slightly and he couldn’t tell for sure but he was pretty sure she rolled her eyes. “Mhmm. Seriously, though, do you need a minute?”

He flexed his shoulders and decided that, yes, maybe he should give himself a few seconds to rest. They sat down together on the edge of the rooftop, their legs dangling over the side. After a whispered ‘Lucky Charm’, he was handed a water bottle.

He looked down at the water bottle in his hand and raised his eyebrows at the spotted red and black water.

“Is this safe to drink?”

“Yeah, it’ll just feel a little funny in your throat,” she said.

He gave her an incredulous look and she clicked her tongue, taking the water bottle from his hand and taking a mouthful of water.

He watched to make sure she swallowed and then drank it as well… and, wow, the words ‘feel a little funny’ were a fucking understatement. He may as well have been drinking glue for how it seemed determined to stick to the lining of his throat.

But, hey, it was technically still water. It tasted like nothing, at least. He managed to get it down.

He sent her a grimace and she brought up a hand to try and stifle her giggles.

“What? Have I been poisoned?” He asked, anxiety and whatever the hell he just drank gnawing at his stomach.

“N-no.” She cleared her throat and forced herself to relax. “It’s just… sorry. I forgot how bad the first time is.”

“How often do you eat and drink your lucky charms?” He asked, a little horrified. He could understand trying to drink it one time out of curiosity, but continuously doing that was just… insane.

“When I want to,” she said nonchalantly. “You get used to the consistency. Everything tastes like the food I ask for, so I can get any food I want for free.”

He swirled the remains of the ‘water’ in the bottle with interest. “Is there anything you can’t make?”

“It looks like I can only make things I… can conceptualize, if that makes sense? Like… I can’t make sci-fi stuff or a living thing because they’re complicated, but I can make a car and stuff like that.”

He stared at her. “You’ve made a car?”

“I had to see if I could!” She said defensively, her face doing it’s best to match the red of her mask (and succeeding).

He was about to make her prove it, because he couldn’t imagine a car coming out of her yoyo, but there was a flash of bright light in the distance.

Their slight smiles dropped at the sight of it and they scrambled to their feet, wordlessly taking off in the direction of the explosion.

~

They watched the right wing of the Agreste mansion erupt with almost white light before it was blown to smithereens. He made a wall of plates in front of them to block them from the debris.

“... sucks to be him,” said Ladybug.

Well, that wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting from Ladybug of all people. Sure, Rena had warned them that Ladybug was going to start showing her actual personality, but it was just so… different than he was used to her being.

Still, he couldn’t help but agree. He may not know why exactly she didn’t like Gabriel Agreste, but he had his reasons. On top of being a terrible employer to Marinette, which was already a giant red flag, Carapace had also met Adrien Agreste. After Paris’s resident sunshine child had been akumatized he’d vented to Carapace about his father (and it seemed like Adrien was even holding some stuff back) and, well, let’s just say Carapace thought that Gabriel deserved way worse for what he did to him --.

“Wait, fuck, Adrien. We should probably help him,” said Carapace.

Ladybug didn’t move. “No, he’s fine. He’s in Tibet at some rich kid private school.”

“Oh. Good for him.”

They watched another room explode in silence. It wasn’t a problem, really. It seemed that whoever was akumatized (the assistant or bodyguard, he assumed) was only really concerned with destroying the mansion. They could just leave, really, it would be a shame if no one got there on time…

He sighed. “We’re going to have to do the right thing, huh?”

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah…”

He dropped his plates and they made their way inside carefully. The house was eerily silent for a place that had just been exploding every few seconds, and he wasn’t sure if the prickling feeling on his skin was the dust in the air attempting to settle or if they were being watched.

They came upon the akuma and both of them relaxed instantly. It was just Gabriel.

Well, Carapace didn’t think Gabriel really had any right to be angry about anything, but at least he’d be taken down quickly.

“Who’s going to be bait?” Asked Ladybug.

“… I can probably take a few more hits,” admitted Carapace, however reluctantly.

She considered this before shaking her head. “I’m feeling lucky.”

Should he argue this point? Yes. Was he going to? No. He wasn’t fond of the idea of getting blown up, thanks.

The fight was over in less than five minutes. Carapace had snuck up behind not-Gabriel (he was pretty sure that he called himself Homme D’Affeure or something like that?) while he was distracted attempting to blow up a flying Ladybug and hit him as hard as he could with a plate.

Carapace grabbed the horrid candy cane tie off of him and tore it apart. Yep, there was the akuma. Why was Gabriel’s akuma always in his tie? Who knew.

Whatever. He tossed the plate like a frisbee at the akuma and smiled when it was crushed against the nearby wall. This smile lessened when the Agreste mansion rapidly started rebuilding itself. What a shame.

Ladybug landed next to him, a little winded but otherwise fine.

(The pair of them watched Gabriel Agreste scramble for his tie. Carapace looked at the pin on his suit and wondered for the millionth time why it was hidden. It was probably the nicest looking part of his outfit (not that that was saying much, his friend could have a field day talking about just what was so bad about his outfit -- and had, on many occasions). He guessed it didn’t go with the red and white theme he had going on, but then why wear it? Sentiment?)

Now for the only bad part of deakumatizing Gabriel: listening to his rich person problems.

Carapace and Ladybug started debating about who should listen to them. Damn their personas, making it so they had to be the ‘noble’ and ‘nice’ ones of the group. This conversation would never end.

Gabriel must have figured this out, too, because -- after ten whole minutes of them arguing -- he’d said that he was fine and that he was just missing his son.

Carapace nearly punched him.

His fingers dug into the skin of his palm as he fought to keep his expression in a friendly smile. “If you say so, sir,” he said.

Ladybug gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I hope you have a pleasant evening.”

They ran out and didn’t stop running until the building was just a white and gray speck in the distance.

She face planted on a rooftop, which could not have been a fun experience, and didn’t move. He came to a stop when he noticed she wasn’t getting back up and walked over. He prodded her limp body with his foot. He was tired, too, but he wasn’t ‘collapse on concrete’ tired.

“You need to do more cardio.”

There was a beat before she raised a hand and made a rude hand gesture.

He raised his eyebrow, a grin fighting its way onto his face. Huh. He thought he liked Ladybug’s actual personality way more than her persona.

He took a seat beside her and crossed his legs, waiting for her to catch her breath. They didn’t need to continue patrols for the day because an akuma had been summoned and he wasn’t in a huge rush to get home.

There was a beat before she pushed herself up to a sitting position and summoned a new water bottle. She downed half of it in one go and then offered him the rest. He only hesitated slightly before taking it. If he got used to the consistency like she had he’d be able to eat anything he wanted as long as Ladybug was around, and there was no way he was going to miss out on that kind of opportunity.

For a while there was no sound other than their heavy breathing, their water bottles, and her occasional mumbles to summon more drinks.

She was the one to speak first: “So, you hate Gabriel Agreste, too?”

He looked at her over the rim of what must have been his millionth water bottle and he couldn’t help the smile making its way across his face as he set the drink down. “Of course. He’s Gabriel Agreste, is there anyone who actually likes him?”

“His assistant, apparently,” said Ladybug, her nose scrunching a tiny bit.

“No way! Really?”

She shrugged. “I don’t get it. He’s got nothing going for him but his money, and even then I hear his business is starting to fail.”

“Think that’s why he actually got akumatized?”

She pointed a finger at him. “You might be onto something.”

He snickered. “I wonder if Hawkmoth is tired of him, too. I mean, he gets akumatized, what, once a month? And he’s always beaten really easily. Why does he even bother with him anymore?”

“Right? You think he sends out his akumas and sees it’s Mr. Pigeon and he goes ‘aw, not THIS guy again’?”

“Nonono. See, Mr. Pigeon at least means that Chat Noir can’t show up to help so we’re at a disadvantage. Mr. Pigeon makes sense. But Gabriel Agreste? Not at all.”

She considered this and then smiled. “Maybe it’s because they’re both rich assholes.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know Hawkmoth is rich?”

“There’s no way he’s any lower than upper middle class. He just has this vibe, y’know?”

He had to give it to her. She wasn’t wrong.

She summoned him a bag of what he assumed were chips and he opened them, inspecting them for a moment… ah, yes, chip-shaped. He didn’t know why he was expecting to be able to figure out what type they were. He bit into one and smiled. She knew his favorite chip flavor? It still had that weird texture, but it tasted good and it was free, so he was happy to eat.

She summoned herself a plate of cookies and nibbled at a few.

They detransformed and continued to eat the summoned foods in silence. It was nice, though.

~

He was the one to push himself to his feet first.

“We need to get back. Something bad had to have happened while we were gone.”

She looked at his outstretched hand for a minute before semi-reluctantly taking it. He pulled her to her feet.

“I hate being impulse control. When do WE get to do dumb things?”

“It’s our duty to be the sane ones, Ladybug.”

“Don’t use my persona against me,” she said, giving his shoulder a tiny shove.

He smiled. “We’d all be dead by now if we didn’t parent those idiots.”

“Yeah.” She winked at him. “I think I’m the family dad, though.”

“No way, the kids aren’t scared enough of me for me to be the mom.”

“They won’t be scared of me for long,” said Ladybug.

Based on what he’d seen of the real Ladybug so far? “Yeah…”

There was a beat as this registered and then horror dawned across their faces.

“... our kids are going to walk all over us, aren’t they?”

“We’ll be dead within the year,” she whispered.

“We need a mom!”

They considered for a moment. Whatever person they recruited to be the mom, there was no doubt in either of their minds that Chat was going to be one of the kids of this metaphorical family. Out of Rena and Chloe...

“Maybe we can get Chloe to be the mom?”

He pointed a finger at her. “You might be onto something.”

~

It was… suspiciously calm when they got home.

They looked at the three people in the living room. Chloe and Chat were playing a video game (Chat was pulling the team). Rena was watching with a gleam in her eyes as she attempted to pit them against each other.

Carapace and Ladybug gave each other wary looks. Something had happened...

Ladybug clicked her tongue. She grabbed a blanket and took a seat by Chloe, wrapping it around them and starting to teach her to play.

She had the right idea, he decided. He dropped down by Chat to watch.


	18. Chapter 18

The previous night, Chloe and Chat had been standing on the table, arms wrapped around each other as they screamed for the help of the other house members.

Rena, the only person home at the time, had run in. Her brown eyes were wide and frantic as she looked around for some kind of threat.

“What?! What is it?! Why’re you --?!”

“Roach!” Said Chat, his voice high. “Kill it!”

Instead of killing it like the two had hoped, she screeched and immediately jumped for the safety of the table.

Except… it was a table. And it definitely wasn’t made to hold the weight of three fully grown adults. It collapsed under their weight.

This wasn’t their main concern, though, because she sat up and looked around for the roach, only to find that it wasn’t where she’d last spotted it.

“Where did it go?! Who has eyes on it?!”

“Run!”

The three of them scrambled from the room as quickly as they possibly could, shoving each other around in attempts to be the first to the maybe-safety of the living room. They got up on the couch after brief scans to check for the roach and none of them relaxed until they were completely sure the roach hadn’t followed them into the room.

And then they all tensed up again because they realized what they’d done.

Ladybug and Carapace were going to kill them.

(Well, Ladybug was going to kill them, Carapace would just give them the Exasperated Dad Sigh and tell them how he wasn’t mad just disappointed which was WAY worse and --!)

“We’re screwed,” mumbled Chat, hugging his knees to his chest as tears threatened to spill from the corners of his eyes.

Chloe rested her head in her hands. “I just got back to normal after all the salsa, I can’t handle another one of their passive-aggressive punishments.”

There was a beat before the couch shifted. Chloe peeked through her fingers to see Rena was pacing around, trying to think.

“Listen, they can only get mad if they find out. Chat, you go out and see if you can find a new table. Chloe and I are going to try and see if we can fix it.”

They all looked at each other, considering their options. They figured it was better than nothing, might as well try.

He took a shaky breath to steel himself and then nodded. He got up and grabbed the envelope with their monthly allowance from Fu before beginning his mission.

The women were left to rebuild a table.

It… might have worked. They were using glue to try and make it harder to see and they managed to put all the pieces together in a way that made them look more or less like normal. Sure, there were a lot of cracks, but Ladybug and Carapace were sleep deprived pretty much at all times, they probably wouldn’t notice.

Rena set the centerpiece -- a vase of flowers -- in the center of the table and they held their breath as they waited for the table to break under the little weight.

It didn't!

They breathed a sigh of relief.

It collapsed.

Chloe stared at the pile that had once been their table. “Hopefully, Chat managed to find a table.”

“I’ll clean,” said Rena.

Chloe shook her head and waved her hands vaguely. This got a confused look from the other woman, but only for a few moments before a swarm of bees floated down the stairs and started working together to carry pieces out the open window and to the dumpster.

“... you’ve been able to help clean the house this whole time and you’ve never once offered.”

“Never bothered me before,” explained Chloe, grinning at the obviously annoyed miraculous holder.

Thankfully, Rena didn’t have enough time to strangle her properly before they heard Chat yelling for help getting the table inside.

They walked out and looked at the table and exchanged worried glances. It was obviously different, the quality of the wood was way better than the first table (who knows, this one might have actually been able to withstand all of their weights). The color was also slightly off, which wasn’t great.

“It was... the closest... I could find,” he said through pants.

Chloe wondered, vaguely, how far he had dragged it.

“They’re gonna know,” said Rena.

“They’re... not going to know,” argued Chat, though it seemed like he was only trying to reassure himself.

Rena pinched the bridge of her nose. “They’re going to know.”

“... how would they know?”

Chloe leveled him with a cold stare. “They have eyes.”

The three of them all looked at the table with dejected expressions before Rena snapped her fingers.

“I’ve got it: tablecloth. We need a tablecloth.”

Chloe took off in the direction of a store without another word.

~

They laid the tablecloth on top of the table and then set the vase down. This table didn’t break, it would have been weird if it had, but that didn’t stop the women from taking a step back before they sighed in relief.

They heard the doorknob jingle and Carapace curse outside as he fetched his keys and the three looked at each other with wide eyes.

Act natural.

They scrambled to the living room for the second time that night (or, rather, the second time in twenty four hours, since it was now daybreak). Chat booted up a game on the console. She grabbed the controllers. Rena took a seat on the arm of the couch and allowed a mischievous smile to grace her face (she’d been fighting it almost all day).

The impulse control stepped in and seemed to instantly figure out something was wrong…

But apparently patrols had tired them out, because they didn’t say anything as they went to join them.

~

Ladybug looked at the tablecloth for a few moments before she turned to give Chloe a questioning look.

Chloe sent her her brightest smile. “I thought it would look nice.”

The miraculous holder blinked.

“I… I suppose it doesn’t look bad…?”

“Of course not, I chose it.”

This pulled Ladybug’s attention away from the table, if only temporarily, and Chloe only smiled wider at the eyeroll she was sent.

~

Carapace raised his eyebrows as he picked up the envelope. He slowly pulled the money out and looked around at the unlucky pair who happened to be in the room.

She met Chat’s eyes. Had he really forgotten to put back the money for the table?

He gave her a sheepish smile.

She scoffed a little and then turned to look at Carapace, who had a shockingly calculated expression on his face as he looked at the money.

And then he sighed. “That was one expensive tablecloth.”

Chloe’s forehead beaded with sweat. Time to lean into her rich kid-ness and hope that was enough to convince him. “Is that so? I hadn’t thought it was that bad. Should I pay it back?”

He sighed again. “No. It’s fine, we have enough for the month, it’s just… talk to me before you buy anything? You, too, Chat. Both of you have no concept of money.”

They both nodded their understanding and Carapace left to go grocery shopping.

She relaxed, her head tipping back against the chair. They had gotten away with it.

~

Chloe hummed as she considered the two video ideas.

The first video was the edited down footage of when she’d gone shopping with Rena and Ladybug and all the dumb things people had said to them while they thought they were cosplayers. It was a fun video and she was actually kind of proud of it.

The other was a video of her calling people out for the dumb things they did. It was on brand and what she was going to devote her entire account to it, because Parisians had… let’s call them ‘interesting’ thought processes. (Also, she liked calling people stupid. Sue her.)

She drummed her fingers on the keyboard as if they would type out an answer for her, then reluctantly came to her conclusion: she should make her debut video representative of her account so people knew what they were signing up for when they followed her.

… but she would also upload the ‘cosplay’ video the next day. For fun.

~

Time to film.

Chloe rested her head on her hand, glaring at the camera.

“Hey, Paris. Queen Bee here to call you out because none of the people I live with have the balls to do it.”

Her lip barely twitched at the quiet whine of protest that Rena made, but apparently she didn’t care enough to look up from her cleaning.

“Listen, if you’re scared of walking home alone and you happen to see one of us on patrols, wave us down. I know you’re all worried and you think it isn’t our jobs to help you, and you’d be right… if our jobs didn’t hinge on everyone in Paris being mentally stable.”

“We’d rather take a few minutes out of our days to walk -- or even carry -- you home than spend half an hour or more fighting you off as an akuma.”

“And, hey, if an akuma does happen to crop up we’ll take you to the nearest akuma shelter. One less civilian to worry about, right?”

She smiled now. “Stop being stupid. Thanks!”

She turned off the video and looked up to see Rena giving her an odd look.

Chloe scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “What? Are you surprised I’m a nice person...?”

The word ‘too’ died on her tongue.

Rena slowly shook her head. “I don’t think you’re nice.”

Oh. Okay. Ow.

An angry buzz started under her skin, but Rena held up a hand to stop her before she could say anything.

“Let me explain. I think you’re kind, but you’re not nice.”

Now it was Chloe’s turn to give her a confused look, the buzz lowering to a dull thrum. What does that even mean?

Rena was off cleaning another room before Chloe even thought to ask her.

~

The next video started out shaky because the phone hadn’t had a stable place to rest.

The camera focused until people could make out Rena, in her costume, talking to a person who’d been carefully blurred. The both of them were clearly excited about something, waving their hands around wildly as they spoke, but the cameraperson had to get closer for anyone to understand what they were saying.

“-- always wondered whether or not Queen Bee and Ladybug actually need the wings or if they’re just for show,” the stranger was saying.

“Too coordinated for it to be fake wings,” said Rena with a shake of her head. “They’re real. I wonder if they have to watch their weight to make sure they can still fly.”

“But then wouldn’t they be easier for akumas to hit around --?”

The camera panned to Chloe’s deadpan expression. “You can believe that Ladybug can create anything she wants with her yoyo but the problem is her wings?”

The camera cut.

Now the viewers were looking at Ladybug, who was smiling at what was obviously a little kid due to all the pink in her outfit. She had lifted the polka dotted red part of her dress up manually to reveal the shimmering wings in question.

“They’re so shiny! What’re they made of?”

Ladybug smiled and knelt down so the kid could reach out and touch her wings. “I’m gonna let you in on a secret --” The audio was temporarily muted to hide the name. “I’m actually Ladybug.”

“No way!” She yelled in her excitement. (Rena stiffened in the background.) “Are you really --?”

Ladybug held a finger to her lips. “Shhhh! It’s a secret, remember?”

The kid lowered her voice to what basically amounted to a stage-whisper. “Are you really Ladybug?!”

Ladybug smiled and nodded her head. “Yeah, but don’t tell anyone, okay?”

The girl gave her a salute.

The next few cuts were just Chloe taking pictures with people. Why was she doing that when their faces were blurred for privacy? Because her hair and makeup had looked really good that day and she was proud, dang it!

The next cut was to Rena and a new guy, though the viewers wouldn’t be able to tell until they heard a distinctly different voice:

“Your outfit is really good, but you got the shading wrong. The orange is lighter than that.”

Rena stared at him for five seconds, jaw slack, eyes wide. The next five seconds were spent opening and closing her mouth without sound coming out. And then she finally got a hold of herself.

“Okay,” she said, apparently too stunned to even be sarcastic about it.

The last cut had all three miraculous holders in frame, they were talking to someone offscreen.

“Who do you guys ship?”

The three of them had looked at each other awkwardly and then Rena’s face split into a mischievous grin.

“If we’re going on who has the most chemistry, I’d have to say QueenBug.”

A blush spread across Ladybug’s cheeks and she made a move like she was going to bury her face in Chloe’s shoulder before she thought better of it and rested her face in her hands instead.

(If anyone had noticed the steady warming of Chloe’s face, no they didn’t.)

The woman they were talking to sounded confused: “QueenBug? I always heard people calling it ChloeBug.”

Chloe tried not to laugh at Ladybug’s clear distress, but she couldn’t help but tease her a little bit. “ChloeBug? QueenBug? I thought it was LadyBee.”

Rena had no such reservations against laughing. “Whatever the ship name, it’s pretty popular.”

“Of course it is, they team up the most. And did you see that thirst trap prank video? If they’re not dating, I’d eat my shoe,” said the woman who had a shoe in her future.

Ladybug, who was still bright red but had gained back some of her functionality now, whispered: “I thought we were called The Lovebugs.”

The video zoomed in on the stunned faces of Rena and Chloe individually before cutting out.


	19. Chapter 19

Chat was a little confused when his phone got a notification. All the miraculous holders had long-since turned off most notifications for their TikToks, and everyone was home so there would be no reason to text him…

He felt a tiny surge of hope in his chest as he picked up his phone. Maybe it was his dad, maybe all it had taken for his dad to realize just how important Chat was to him was for him to leave --.

It was a TikTok notification.

His elation popped like a balloon and he deflated, sinking back into the unfortunate person who had been unlucky enough to be around when Chat had gotten into one of his cuddling moods.

Carapace barely even looked up from the video he was editing for class (which was fair, his headphones were so loud that Chat could hear what was going on, he doubted that the other could hear anything), but he did offer a tiny squeeze.

It wasn’t much, but it was still nice.

He tipped his head back against Carapace’s shoulder and pulled up the app. After all, it wouldn’t have given him a notification if it wasn’t slightly important, he’d specifically set it up that way.

Ah. It was because one of the four people he was following had posted. Cool.

He pulled up the video that Chloe had uploaded and raised his eyebrows slightly. She was telling people to ask for help when scared. He smiled. Sure, her tone was a little off but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get behind the message.

A weight he didn’t realize had been there was lifted from his shoulders. He had been more worried than he’d liked to admit about what Chloe was planning since she had refused to tell anyone anything. He still didn’t really understand why she had kept it a secret, but he brushed it off. It couldn’t matter that much.

~

So the weight was back.

Carapace looked exhausted. “You don’t need to call us out, too. I can get why you’re doing it for the civilians, but… we don’t need to change our behavior to not get akumatized.”

“Who said I was doing your stuff to not get you akumatized? No, I’m doing that part for fun.”

Everyone looked at Ladybug for support. The woman in question was staring blankly into her coffee mug.

Carapace reached out and took the mug from her, snapping her back to reality.

“That’s mine. Give it back.”

“You need sleep.”

“Hypocrite. I know you don’t sleep, either.”

“I don’t sleep because of school.”

“And I don’t sleep because of work.”

“Take less -- hey!”

Rena, apparently tired of their argument, had plucked the cup from Carapace’s hand. She fixed her gaze on Ladybug. “Ask Chloe not to call us out and I’ll give it back to you.”

Ladybug blinked and then looked at Chloe. “Don’t call us out.”

“No,” replied Chloe, short and sweet.

(… well, maybe not sweet.)

Ladybug looked at Rena and shrugged like ‘what can you do?’ She was given her coffee back, but she didn’t immediately go back to spacing. Instead, she looked at Chloe. “Wait, are you going to be telling them about me?”

“Nah. Currently I have two videos of you guys. One I need to just find the name of some American song, and the other one I’m going to wait until after someone slips up and everyone figures out who you really are to post.”

Ladybug blinked. “I… thank you? I think.”

“Mhmm.”

“We’re not going to mess up,” said Rena. At least someone was trying to defend them.

Chloe didn’t even glance over, just waving her off.

Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chloe.

~

Carapace had jinxed them.

Carapace had come down the stairs, a spring in his step, and Chat had done the nice thing: “Someone’s happy.”

“I finished all my schoolwork! I get to relax!”

“Congrats.” Ladybug looked up from her sketchbook and attempted to send him finger guns despite the fact that she had three markers, a pencil, and a pen in her hands (it did not work).

Carapace hadn’t even gotten to sit down.

“Hey, guys, akuma,” said Rena, not even looking up from her phone.

The overworked miraculous holder’s smile slipped off his face like sap.

“Not it,” said Carapace.

Ladybug looked back down at her sketchbook. “I can’t help either, this is due tomorrow.”

Chloe grinned and looked up from where she was painting her nails blue. “You’re supposed to say ‘not it’, ‘bug.”

This got an eyeroll and a mumbled ‘not it’.

“Not it, by the way,” said Chloe. She blew on her fingers. “My nails aren’t dry yet, I can’t punch things.”

Chat kind of wanted to opt out, too. He didn’t have a good reason, he was just really tired. He bit his lip and nuzzled his face further in Chloe’s side to pretend to be asleep.

Rena crossed her arms. “I’d love to let you guys stay, but it’s a fire one and they’re coming this way.”

“... so don’t let them?” Said Ladybug, but she was already setting all her things on the coffee table.

“She’s the size of the Tower, I don’t really have a choice in this.”

There was a collective groan as they all followed Ladybug’s lead by getting up and transforming at varying rates.

“She’s called Cinderella,” said Rena as she opened the door.

“Aw, cute,” said Chat.

It was not.

Imagine there’s a person over 300 meters tall (1000 feet for Americans). Tall, right? Kind of terrifying? Now imagine they’re wearing a dress and veil made of flames, fire and destruction following behind them like some twisted version of a bridal train.

Ladybug gave everyone that needed it masks so they could breathe (Carapace had one built into his costume) and they all took off in the direction of the akuma.

Rena gave them cover so they could get in close and everyone winced a little when they realized the akuma was crying.

“Oh… I kind of feel bad for her, she just wants to cry. It’s not her fault she’s made of fire…” Said Rena with a frown as they made it to the edge of the building beside her.

Cinderella wailed louder and they watched her kick a building. The place tore off of its foundations and went flying for multiple blocks before crashing into another building… which caused the many buildings nearby to topple like a set of dominoes.

“You were saying?” Said Chloe.

Rena stuffed her hands in the pockets of her suit and glared at the ground.

Carapace was looking a little pale (which was a bad thing, considering the fact that he’s black). “Y’know what? I’ll hang back and take videos for TikTok. You guys have fun,” he said.

Ladybug worried the folds of her dress. “How nice of you. Think I can help?”

Rena waved them off. “Don’t worry about it. I put cameras on the suits… a week ago? Maybe two weeks.”

The other four stiffened at that and their attention was briefly pulled away from the giant flame monster, which was a real feat if you think about it.

“You…?” Chat didn’t know what to say.

Chloe was the first one to properly snap out of it, probably because she was already used to having her entire life televised. “We’re talking about that when this akuma stuff is over.”

Apparently they’d been looking away from Cinderella for too long, because now she was crying harder and… of course she cried lava. Why not?

They were forced to back up to the other edge of the rooftop they were on to avoid getting doused by lava.

Chloe looked over. “Rena, I’ve got a plan.”

“Oh no,” whispered Ladybug, her voice so soft that even Chat had to strain to hear her despite standing only a foot away. It was more than a little concerning that Chloe’s main partner was so against that, but what can you do?

“Uncover you guys and leave me covered. I’m going to look around and see if I can figure out what the akumatized item is,” Chloe explained, pulling out her spinning top.

“Uh… sure, but why are we visible?” Rena made a vague motion with her wrist. Chloe disappeared from view, so she must have done it.

They didn’t get an answer in the traditional sense. Instead something that felt like a thin wire wrapped around the four of them and they were tossed at Cinderella.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I get a little fight scene. As a treat.

Ladybug hated fire.

Maybe that was why Hawkmoth seemed determined to have at least one fire type akuma a month. She didn’t know if or how he knew, but it seemed like something he’d do.(Maybe he played Pokemon, she mused, and knew that bug types were weak against fire types. She doubted it, though.)

But the problem, somehow, wasn’t currently the giant fire demon. It was that they were falling very quickly.

She reached past Carapace to grab ahold of the back of Rena’s suit and unfurled her wings. She pulled the woman closer to her and forced herself to a quick stop, which was decidedly NOT fun. Her brain rattled in her head as she felt the boys tear past them and Rena made a choking sound when her suit dug into her.

But she’d managed to stop them from falling. And with four meters to spare. A new record!

She changed her grip on Rena to hold her in her arms and checked her throat as she slowly made her way down. A little red and irritated, but fine.

She set her on the ground and looked around for the boys.

Chat had landed on his feet with ease. Carapace had made a staircase out of plates and was doing that awkward half-run people do when they start falling down the stairs and need to go fast to stay upright.

She set her down and allowed herself to breathe.

Cool. No one died.

(Yet. She suspected that Chloe would be getting at least a little punch once the akuma was gone if the look on the other holders’ faces meant anything.)

Their not-so-smooth entrance had apparently been noticed by Cinderella. How did she figure this out?

“FOOT!” Warned Carapace, which wasn’t really needed because the giant foot was hard to miss but whatever.

The four scattered like the rats in Ratatouille. The world shook in a way that nearly threw her off-balance and it took everything in her not to go skidding across the asphalt on her stomach.

She ducked behind a currently untouched car -- a bad idea considering if the car caught on fire the gasoline would blow her sky high but it was cover so she was ignoring it -- and looked around wildly for some sort of inspiration.

Rena was nowhere to be seen. Ladybug figured she was attempting to get civilians to safety.

Chat and Carapace had taken it upon themselves to attempt to distract Cinderella. They yelled for her attention from random spots and then attempted to not become stains on the pavement as the increasingly annoyed akuma attempted to squash them under her heel or sent a trail of fire after them.

Ladybug vaguely noted that Cinderella was rather slow to react, which wasn’t abnormal for larger akumas, but it was still good to note that in case she could use that...

She considered making a tripwire with the streetlights. It was a classic. Unfortunately, though, she doubted that the streetlights were strong enough to stop something as big as this particular akuma.

(Also, her yoyo string catching on fire or getting caught under Cinderella would not have been good.)

She felt a hand tap her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned to look and Rena and scowled at being pulled out of her thinking process. “What?”

Rena winced a little bit at her sharp tone but pointed out the fire hydrant nearby. “Help me with this.”

She looked over at it and nodded. She wrapped her yoyo around it and the two of them threw their weight into trying to cut the hydrant in half.

No dice, unfortunately.

Time for more drastic measures.

“Go get cover.”

“But --!”

“Go.”

Rena looked like she was about to try and argue again, but she stopped herself and ran to hide in a building.

Ladybug pushed the car to the hydrant and climbed on top of it.

“HEY! CINDERELLA!”

A tear-stained (was it still called tear-stained if she cried lava?) face turned towards her.

A trail of flame went straight for her and Ladybug barely had time to think ‘oh fuck’ before the car beneath her exploded.

She went flying -- in the bad way. A weird weightlessness overtook her and she struggled to unfurl her wings through the haze. She hit a nearby building and it took everything in her not to cry out as her own ribcage did its best to poke holes in her.

She slid to the ground and rested her head back against the concrete. Everything hurt. She was pretty sure she’d felt her brain hit the back of her skull and every breath rattled in her lungs and her ears was threatening to drive her insane and every bone she had seemed to be trying to break out and…

She just wanted to close her eyes and sleep… just for a minute...

A new, sharp pain flared across her cheek and her eyes flew open to see Chloe standing over her.

“Don’t die on me.”

She attempted to swat the giant bug away so she could sleep, which didn’t work because her body was currently not responding to her wishes. She had to settle for a slurred ‘fuck off’. All she got was a tiny scoff as the woman pointed her spinning top at her.

If Ladybug could move, she would have cringed when honey covered her. It was so… weird feeling, honestly. It was even weirder to feel her bones mending and her blood slowly seeping back into her. She’d been doing it for years and yet she doubted she’d ever get used to it.

Within a minute, Ladybug could move her limbs. She reached out and Chloe took her hand, pulling her out of the honey...

Ah. Fire. She’d forgotten about the fire. Somehow.

Probably because the water that had erupted out of where the fire hydrant had once been and now the fire was struggling to get near them. (Her socks were drenched, though, so she could hardly think of this as a positive.)

“What’d you figure out?”

Chloe gave her a slightly annoyed look but she started explaining: “Cinderella is only wearing the veil, the dress, and some shoes. I couldn’t find any pins or belts, so unless Hawkmoth started hiding the akumatized items it has to be one of those.”

Ladybug nodded and looked up at Cinderella. What could they do? Usually the akumatized object was obvious...

Rena materialized next to them and the two immediately reached to push each other behind themselves. Then they relaxed.

Ladybug winced internally when she heard Chat give a cry of pain. They were on borrowed time.

“You got a plan?” She asked. Her pride wasn’t worth her housemates’ lives.

Rena hesitated. “I have one for the veil.”

They waited in polite silence for her to continue, and when she didn’t Chloe made a tiny motion to say ‘get on with it, will you?’

She beamed. “One of you needs to fly Chat up to destroy it.”

Ladybug considered this and then nodded. “Queenie, I’ll leave that to you. I can get the dress with a lucky charm. Can you and Carapace destroy the shoes?”

Rena nodded seriously.

There was a flicker of light around them and Cinderella paused mid-stomp. She made a confused sound that was audible miles below.

Chat and Carapace looked like they were going to collapse -- out of exhaustion or relief, it was hard to tell.

The women walked over and Chloe went to work on healing Carapace.

“What’s the plan?” Asked Chat who, besides the arm that appeared to be doing its best imitation of a staircase, looked fine.

The women exchanged looks as if to say ‘I’M not going to tell him, you do it’, and this was enough for Chat to figure out that whatever it was he wasn’t going to like it. Or maybe it was the fact that Chloe didn’t seem all that concerned about healing him up.

Whatever had tipped him off, he fell back in the water and groaned.

~

Thank the kwamis for Rena’s powers. Why hadn’t Master Fu given someone this miraculous sooner? Fights were SO much easier with her around.

Rena and Carapace had taken to latching onto Cinderella’s feet and attempting not to get thrown off as she kicked building after building in search of… something? Maybe them, maybe the person who had gotten her akumatized, they didn’t know for sure.

Chloe had taken Chat up to her head to Cataclysm the veil.

Ladybug had summoned the largest sword she could while still making it functional and positioned it over the top of Cinderella’s dress, preparing for her drop.

And all of that was met with zero resistance, because the akuma couldn’t see them.

“NOW!” Yelled Chloe.

Chat started screaming as he was dropped onto the flame-covered veil and she ignored the taste of bile. It would be fine soon, the akuma would be gone and they could fix it, she reminded herself.

But it might not be gone if she didn’t do anything soon, so she should probably get on with it.

Ladybug fought her normal self-preservation instincts and stabbed the giant flame demon, then flew downward as quickly as she could.

The akuma attempted to get away from the sword currently splitting her and her dress open, but it was too late.

She was just cutting a cake she was just cutting a cake she was just cutting a cake that was SCREAMING --.

Just a cake!

And then the sword was slicing through nothing.

She peeked her eyes open and found that someone else must have gotten the akuma. She dropped the sword and looked around wildly for a falling body.

There.

She caught the person who had been Cinderella and vaguely registered the sound of Chloe whizzing past her to catch Chat.

Ladybug glanced down at the sword steadily falling to earth and winced, willing it to disappear before it managed to do any damage to the newly-resurrected people below.

She allowed the person to rest her head against her shoulder as she slowly made her descent, her fingers combing through her hair soothingly.

It was done.


	21. Chapter 21

Rena stared at the plates in her hands -- or, more specifically, the akuma she’d squashed between them like a pair of cymbals. She wondered, vaguely, whether or not the akuma would disappear with the plates or whether it would drop to the ground in a pile of goo.

She looked around for Carapace to ask, only to find he was soothing a kid who had lost track of their parents in the attack. He was sitting on a rooftop, kid in his arms, and pointing out random things to keep them distracted.

At one point, she managed to catch his eyes, but he gave her a ‘not now’ look and pointed past her to show the kid a dog.

She huffed a little bit, but dropped it (and the plates) because it wasn’t like she could be mad at him for helping a kid in need.

Besides, her veins were still buzzing with adrenaline and happiness. She’d helped fight an akuma with all the other holders! They’d even used her plan! If she died right then she would have died happy.

And as she noticed the giant red and black blur of Ladybug’s sword falling to earth, she thought maybe that would happen.

Luckily (or unluckily?), the sword disappeared into thin air before she could die a perfectly timed death.

A few moments later, Chloe touched down beside her, a slightly frazzled Chat Noir in her arms. She looked annoyed about how he wouldn’t get down immediately, but she also wasn’t dropping him.

Rena smiled awkwardly. “Sorry about the plan, Chat.”

Chat looked at her, luminous green eyes unblinking… and then he pulled a smile to his face. “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” Mused Chloe. “Great. Get down.”

Chat swallowed thickly. “Uh… my legs aren’t really reformed yet, so I can't.”

The two women exchanged skeptical looks momentarily before Ladybug and the person who had been akumatized settled on top of a nearby car.

They seemed to have been in the middle of a wedding, if the gorgeous white gown was anything to go off of. Someone must have had cold feet, then, whether it was her or the groom. The bride sniffled, her face in Ladybug’s shoulder.

Ladybug was speaking, and Rena had to not-so-subtly shift closer to hear:

“-- to postpone the wedding for a while. Since you got akumatized, your family should be able to guess you aren’t in the right mental state. Leave town for a while, get some therapy, and consider if this is what you really want. Sound good?”

The bride whimpered and hugged Ladybug closer. “But it cost so much --.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Ladybug said, running her fingers through her hair. She looked up. “QUEENIE. COME OVER HERE?”

The bee miraculous holder wandered closer, Chat positioned on her shoulders like a child on their dad’s at an amusement park. “Yeah, ‘bug?”

“Want to reimburse a wedding?”

Chloe scoffed and probably would have crossed her arms over her chest if they weren’t busy holding Chat’s legs. There was a silent glaring contest between the two bugs before Chloe reluctantly detransformed. She pulled out her phone. One click (her dad was on speed dial, apparently) and started walking away with a cry of “Daddy! I need help --!”

Ladybug schooled her face back into a caring smile. “See? It’ll be fine. I know a few places outside of Hawkmoth’s domain that are willing to provide free therapy to Parisians in need.”

Rena decided to brush past the fact that there was free therapy somewhere (partially because she was a Parisian and, at this point, therapy was pretty much a foreign concept to her… but mainly because a different part of the sentence had stuck out to her).

She bit her tongue, though. It wasn’t something to bring up in front of the civilians. Instead, she rested her hands on her hips and waited for everyone to finish their hero duties and for the civilians to disperse.

The other heroes wandered over eventually and they all started on their way home.

“Does anyone think that that akuma was a little too easy?” Asked Chloe.

This got a bunch of nasty looks from everyone, especially one cat miraculous holder.

“No, Chloe, it wasn’t easy. You just took all the best jobs,” said Chat.

“Think faster next time,” said Chloe with a shrug.

Rena found herself wondering why Chloe, the one of them with magically enhanced emotional intelligence, was the one to always have everyone mad at her, but she brushed the thought aside. She needed to focus on what SHE was mad about.

“You know how large Hawkmoth’s domain is and you didn’t say anything?”

Ladybug clicked her tongue irritably. “Rena, calm down, please. I really don’t have time for another akuma tonight.”

(Rena decidedly did not calm down, but that wasn’t surprising. Has anyone ever really calmed down when someone tells them to?)

“You didn’t think that maybe you should have shared that with the group? Or all of Paris, for that matter?”

“No. Because I’m not completely sure about where the line is, it’s more circumstantial than anything… and if everyone knew they’d leave and Hawkmoth would just move to another city. We need to keep him here, where we know where everything is.”

“You could have at least told us about it.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t tell us anything about him. The center of it is by the Tower. We already knew he was probably rich.”

Chat stepped between the two of them like he was expecting them to start a fistfight or something and he brought his brightest smile to his face. “Guys, really, it’s fine. Let’s just all try and be more open about things we find out from now on, okay?”

The two briefly met eyes before turning on Chat Noir for having the audacity to try and calm them down.

… at least he’d gotten them to stop fighting each other?

~

The five of them had stopped cold when they came upon their house and found one of the windows broken.

They exchanged anxious looks and transformed back into their suits.

It wasn’t that crime wasn’t a thing anymore, it just wasn’t very common. Who knows what would set someone off enough to create an akuma, the little bit of money you could get from robberies weren’t worth possibly dying a painful death (even if it was only temporary).

And, really, what were the chances that the miraculous holders of all people would get robbed?

Still, the person who had done it was likely still there. They would have had to get inside after the miraculous cure had been cast for the window to remain broken…

“Whoever it was, they’re gone. I can’t feel them anywhere inside there,” Chloe said, twirling the string of her spinning top around her finger. 

Interesting. Either they’d gone in with a distinct purpose or they’d noticed them coming and somehow gotten away without them noticing...

(Or Chloe was wrong, but they doubted it. She was usually right about this kind of thing.)

Rena pulled the light around them to mask their presence as they neared their home. Just in case.

Chat reached out and opened the door...

The place had been ransacked. Potted plants had been tossed and now the floor was coated in shards of clay and a fine layer of dirt, the cushions on the couch had been torn open and feathers spilled onto the floor, a game controller had been thrown at the wall hard enough to stick itself in the plaster, an armchair had been pushed on its side.

But that wasn’t what made Rena gasp.

Because the Hawkmoth Conspiracy Board had been the target.

Papers had been torn off of it in such a rush that pieces were still stuck to it, their calculations and work had been ripped to shreds, their pictures defaced. In a paint such a dark purple it was almost black, words were scrawled across the board:

STOP TRYING TO FIND ME. YOU WILL NOT LIKE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T.

The miraculous holders stared for a moment...

Chloe scoffed, unimpressed. “So we all agree that this is lame, right?”

“SUPER lame.”


	22. Chapter 22

There were a few moments right after they realized that it was Hawkmoth that the miraculous holders had panicked. They had all half-ran to their rooms and started looking around to make sure their identities were safe.

And, surprisingly, it seemed that they were.

Carapace’s backpack had been thrown across the room hard enough to dent the plaster but the books and folders inside were untouched. His computer screen had been cracked but Hawkmoth hadn’t even tried to unlock it.

Right, so apparently he was just trying to scare them. A kind of ‘I know where you sleep, don’t test me’ situation.

He fixed his overturned desk chair and took a seat with a heavy sigh of relief. His room was in shambles and he was going to have to spend one of his few nights off cleaning and maybe beg for money from the rich kids, but at least his family was safe.

“Hey, guys?” Called Chat, his voice laced with concern.

Carapace was on his feet in a flash. Considering Hawkmoth was only really concerned with getting the cat and ladybug miraculous, it was entirely plausible that he’d only been looking to figure out those two identities.

(Why had he decided to trash the house if that was just it, Carapace didn’t know. It would be better to not let on the fact that he knew who they were. Pettiness, maybe?)

He was the first to Chat’s room, but he could hear the others running over, too.

Chat was standing in his room, a confused frown playing at his lips as he nudged things around with his feet. He looked up at the others. “He didn’t do anything to my room… I don’t…”

“Huh?” Said Ladybug.

There was a beat where everyone looked over the room. Chat was right, he realized. The room was a mess but not in the same way everyone else’s was. Nothing was broken.

And it wasn’t like Hawkmoth would have just missed the room. It was in the middle of the hallway, and everyone else had been hit. It wasn’t a time thing, he had just… somehow not done anything.

The four in the doorway exchanged wary glances.

And then Rena snickered. “He must have thought he’d already done your room. I mean, look at it. It’s enough of a mess, he didn’t need to do anything.”

“That’s true. I’d assume I’d already done it, too,” said Chloe.

“Maybe we should stay in here for the night,” suggested Ladybug. She bunched up the front of her dress in her hands. “It’s safer, no broken glass to step on or anything.”

“The bed’s certainly big enough,” said Rena.

Chloe nodded. “And it’d be nice to have something to do. At least he has a working TV, still.”

“Sleepover in Chat’s room it is!” Said Carapace with false cheer.

If Chat noticed anything off about their demeanor, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he started walking around and picking stuff up.

They all went off in different directions.

He detransformed and changed into a designated Sleeping Hoodie (which was definitely different than his everyday hoodies) and a pair of sweatpants… then he reluctantly added socks. Ladybug had been right about the floor being more than a little dangerous. Still, wearing socks around the house was weird to him.

At least it wasn’t shoes.

He walked down to the kitchen for some snacks and found Ladybug mourning the broken coffee machine. She was curled up on the ground, hugging the few remaining coffee pods to her like she thought Hawkmoth would come back and steal them.

He slowly knelt down next to her to make sure she wasn’t going into shock or something.

She blinked at him, and then her face hardened. She no longer looked sad, instead she looked absolutely livid. He wasn’t sure this was an improvement.

“I’m killing Hawkmoth.”

There was no response to that that didn’t sound stupid (and he didn’t want to mess up and add himself to her hitlist), so he just reached out and rested his hand on her head. He had no clue what he was doing, but it worked, somehow. Her shoulders relaxed.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Murder is bad or whatever.”

He couldn’t really disagree, so he just nodded and withdrew his hand.

He got up and realized he’d forgotten why he’d come down to the kitchen in the first place. He stood there for a moment, fruitlessly trying to recall why he was there, before dejectedly going back to his room. It was there that his stomach growled to remind him that food was a thing and he headed back down.

Chloe and Rena were in the living room. Chloe had changed into a nightgown and Rena was sporting a sports bra and pajama shorts.

Chloe had her phone out and she motioned for him to move so she could get a better shot. He did so, moving to hide behind the couch.

She beamed at him before tapping her phone once and beginning to speak:

“Hawkmoth is so lame. I mean, look at all this. He comes into our house when he’s completely sure none of us are around like a --”

“Fucking,” Rena swore for her.

“-- coward. Imagine being so scared of what five teenagers would do in retaliation for trashing their house that you don’t even have the guts to do it while they’re there. And all he did was throw --”

“Shit.”

“-- around! Do some damage! Congrats on wasting maybe a few thousand euros, but maybe step up your game a little. Even your akumas do more than this.”

She walked over to show the message Hawkmoth had written them and then rolled her eyes.

“I mean, look at this --”

“Shit.”

“What does he think he is? A 90s cartoon villain? PLEASE. At least those have the --”

“Balls.”

“-- to actually show up once and a while at the season finale. Give me a break. Hawkmoth, if you want us to be scared, maybe you should try being an actual threat, don’t you think?”

She stopped recording and uploaded the video as is.

He got out of his hiding place.

… did he really forget what he was doing? Again?

Well, he knew whatever it was he was doing was in the kitchen. He walked in and realized that, hey, it was a KITCHEN. What could he be doing except for getting food? He walked to the fridge and found that, to his horror, Hawkmoth had just straight up stolen their food. Like an asshole.

He dejectedly made his way up to Chat’s room, intending to collapse on his bed and whine until the rich kid ordered pizza or something, only to pause in the doorway.

Chat’s room was… clean? The floors were spotless, the bed made. The room smelled faintly of lavender.

His brain scrambled for an explanation. Maybe Chat had been akumatized. Or, maybe, someone else had gotten akumatized into a copy-Chat and they’d taken the wrong one home by mistake. Or Rena was playing a prank on them.

Chat looked up from the game he was playing and gave a half-smile. He was wearing a set of silk pajamas, because of course he was.

“Are you coming in or are you just going to stand there forever?”

He didn’t know what was going on, which was really just a summary of the entire night if he was being honest, so he just went on autopilot and picked up the other controller.

The others filed in one at a time. Ladybug was first and she blinked a few times before she slowly walked over and sat on Carapace’s other side. He had no clue what she was wearing, because she had wrapped herself up tightly in a thick blanket -- wait, wasn’t that just the comforter on her bed?

Before he could ask her this, she wriggled her arms out of her blanket and started sketching. (Everyone knew not to interrupt her when she was working unless they wanted to risk her snapping at them, and the loss of her coffee could only make that worse.)

A few minutes later Rena plopped herself down beside Chat. Carapace flinched and ended up dying in the game. He hadn’t heard her come in, but that wasn’t surprising anymore, just annoying. He glanced at her and saw that she looked angry enough to make an akuma.

Oh. Right. Rena was the one always cleaning up after Chat. He’d be mad, too, if he had to do that for months only to find out that he was perfectly capable of cleaning up after himself.

She calmed down a little when she saw that their game was currently not going well. Karma.

Chloe came in last and, as always, was the most blunt: “Who are you and what have you done with Chat?”

Chat paused the game and pulled an awkward smile to his face. “I… it’s still me. It’s just… I didn’t want to have my first sleepover to be so messy.”

There was a moment as this registered in everyone’s minds.

“This is your WHAT?!”

Fuck the Hawkmoth thing, this was way more important.


	23. Chapter 23

Okay, maybe the reason they had decided to do this sleepover was so they could make sure Chat wasn’t actually a traitor… but there was a new priority.

Sure, Chloe knew that rich kids led a sheltered life better than anyone… but to go an entire 18 years without even a sleepover? That was messed up. This needed to be rectified immediately.

There was no time to even change, they’d all just transformed for day-to-day clothes and ran out the house. Chloe had gotten wine because she didn’t have to worry about her identity when she was inevitably carded. Carapace got snacks and extra pillows and blankets. Rena had found some games to play.

(Ladybug hadn’t left the house because she still had work to do, but she’d gone up to her room and brought down some stuff for making friendship bracelets. Chat had also stayed behind despite his protests because they were going to treat him whether he liked it or not.)

By the time Chloe had gotten back, she’d found Carapace making a fort. She’d offered to help, but he’d insisted it was totally fine and he didn’t need any help. And, granted, he did a pretty good job making a makeshift shelter… but shouldn’t it need more support?

(If anyone saw a few bees supporting some of the more precarious parts of the fort, no they didn’t.)

“Wait, when did you get here?” Said Chloe, focusing in on Rena as she crawled into the fort.

“Twenty minutes ago,” said Rena simply, wrapping one of the many blankets around herself and resting her head on a pillow pile.

Chloe was pretty sure that wasn’t true, but she couldn’t exactly disprove it, so she just settled down.

They all sat in a circle -- well, it was more a square with a random line, because Ladybug was laying with her head on Chloe’s lap as she worked -- and pulled out all the games Rena had brought out.

Chloe looked up from the monopoly box to send the woman across from her a tiny glare. “Really?”

“You shouldn’t have trusted me. This one’s on you.”

Okay. Yeah. Fair.

Chloe picked up the shoe. Carapace grabbed the boat.

Chat and Rena were fighting over the cat piece.

“I’m the cat! It’s my birthright!”

“You always get to be a cat. Let someone else have a turn!”

“No! It’s mine!”

Rena stuck her tongue out at Chat, which he immediately returned.

Chloe scoffed a little. “If you two don’t make a decision neither of you get the cat.”

There was a silence as the two considered the pros and cons…

Rena smirked. “I get the cat.”

“No! Screw you! Neither of us do!” Chat said, stealing the cat from her and tossing it over his shoulder. There went the clean room, it was good for the hour that it lasted.

“Rude,” huffed Rena as she took the pot of gold.

Chat reluctantly took the car one after a bit of thinking.

Chloe, Carapace, and Ladybug all exchanged exhausted expressions. They all knew that Rena had likely done that on purpose to mess with Chat, but what were they to do?

They handed out wine. Because, surely, that would solve their problems.

“I want the thimble,” said Ladybug, her gaze falling back to her almost completed sketch.

Chloe smiled. “You’re going to play? We’re doomed.”

“I’m afraid I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

But, to both of their surprises, it wasn’t a complete landslide. Sure, her luck was ungodly (or, rather, godly, thanks a lot, Tikki) and she was quickly taking over the entire board… but Rena had a seemingly endless supply of money.

Ladybug finished her assignment and sat up. Her lips were pressed together tightly as she looked at the board properly for the first time since the game had started.

“... how are you still alive?” Said Ladybug quietly. She had at least one card of almost every color and four monopolies. Surely, she should have won by now.

“Fuck if I know,” said Rena with a bright smile as she rolled the dice again.

Ah. Crap. Now it was Chloe’s turn. She looked at the stretch of board in front of her shoe that was owned solely by Ladybug. She looked at her twenty monopoly dollars and three properties left. She could bargain for a few more turns to stay alive, but she knew what would happen. It was inevitable...

She huffed and brought her wine to her lips and threw her things at Ladybug.

“Take it. I’m done.”

“Noooooo, Chloe, you were our last hope,” said Chat.

Rena frowned. “I’m not out of the game yet.”

“... Rena, you have one monopoly and it’s on the browns and two random properties. You’re going to lose,” said Carapace. He looked at Chloe and clinked his bottle with hers. “Better luck next time.”

“There won’t be a next time. I’m never playing Ladybug again.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes and then the dice.

A few turns later, Carapace’s eyes narrowed and he scooted towards Rena. Rena looked confused at this but she brushed it off. A mistake, because Carapace stole the blanket from her and shook it.

Out tumbled a bunch of monopoly money, a few green houses, and one red hotel.

“Oh. That makes much more sense,” mumbled Ladybug, who was apparently not all that concerned about the fact that Rena had been cheating the entire time.

Chloe was. She flipped the board.

“Rena’s disqualified. I got second place.”

Everyone agreed, which was good. They didn’t have a choice.

They decided to move onto something that would be harder to cheat at: video games. They chose Mario Kart, because apparently monopoly wasn’t enough to make them all completely hate each other so they needed to up their game.

… it turns out that maybe all the time Chat spent playing video games hadn’t gone to waste.

Despite Ladybug’s luck with the RNG system (how did she manage to get a blue shell in second place? Was that allowed?), she couldn’t seem to beat him.

And if even Ladybug’s luck wasn’t enough to beat him, then there was no chance for all the others. It became a race for third place.

It was a four player game, and Chloe wasn’t all that fond of losing, so she’d opted to just sling herself over Chat’s lap in an attempt to distract him.

(It wasn’t working.)

“Hey, Carapace, quick question…” Said Chat, looking away to make sure his friend had heard.

Carapace made a ‘hm’ sound, not daring to tear his eyes away from the screen. He and Rena were currently neck and neck, and he was NOT going to lose.

Chat’s eyes wandered back to the game. “Your outfit… was it modeled after the green turtle shells?”

“Mhmm. Think they’re cool.”

Rena broke into a wide grin as her item finished loading. “Great! I’m glad you like them! A carapace for Carapace, then!”

“Wait no --.”

He got hit with a turtle shell and Rena pulled ahead as the two started the last lap.

Ladybug’s item finished loading and it seemed that fate was simply not smiling upon the boys.

“Hey hey hey Chat hey Chat hey --.”

“Please tell me you don’t have another blue shell.”

“Fine. I won’t tell you.”

Chat gave a strangled scream as he was hit with the fiftieth blue shell of the night.

… he still won. Ladybug came second, then Rena, then about four other characters, then Carapace, then the rest…

Chloe fought to keep the laughter out of her voice as she asked him: “How did you get so far behind?”

Carapace hung his head. “When you get to the middle you get to the item clusterfuck and it’s impossible to recover.”

Chat clapped him on the back and Rena nudged his remaining bottle of wine into his hands. He accepted both gratefully and downed the bottle far faster than anyone had expected. Dang. He must have taken that loss way worse than they’d thought.

He gasped for air when he got to the bottom of the bottle and set it down. “Right, what’s next?”

Ladybug yawned and rubbed her eye, glancing at the time. “Friendship bracelets or more games.”

“Are there any non-luck based games here?” Said an exhausted Carapace.

There was a beat as everyone looked at Rena, who thought about it for a minute before shaking her head.

“Friendship bracelets it is!”


	24. Chapter 24

People were starting to settle down as the night stretched on.

Chat felt kind of weird about the sleepover, if he was being honest. He was technically the host, but he hadn’t planned any of the activities. They also hadn’t let him help out at all. Sure, it seemed they were throwing the sleepover for him, but it felt weird to not be involved at all when it was being held in his own room.

(He also wasn’t stupid enough to think that they had decided to do the sleepover for purely innocent reasons. Rena and Ladybug were paying just a little bit too much attention for it to be mere curiosity. He had nothing to hide except for the trash and clothes he’d stuffed in his closet to make his room look cleaner, though, so he was fine with it.)

Still, it was kind of nice.

He looked at the other four.

Carapace was sitting cross-legged a few feet away, his back facing away from everyone as he worked on his bracelets. He was singing random showtunes to himself, but his singing was getting cut off at random due to his giggles at whatever he was doing. Chat tried to peek over his shoulder and Carapace gave an overexaggerated gasp and flung himself across the floor to keep the bracelets out of his sight.

“No peeking!”

“Alright! Alright!” Said Chat, shaking his head exasperatedly even as a smile threatened to make its way across his face.

Carapace narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously for a moment before slowly returning to his spot.

Ladybug was apparently only half awake, though it was hard to tell if this was the effect of the wine or the lack of coffee. Carapace had given her his hoodie when he’d seen her shivering and now she was swamped in the fabric. This didn’t seem to bother her, though, as she barely swayed in time with his singing.

Rena had finished all her bracelets for everyone already, opting to just make braids of each of their costume colors. Now she was weaving thread into Chloe’s hair.

Chloe was putting the finishing touches on her fifth bracelet. They were all the same, alternating black and yellow threads. Still, it took a while to make all the knots necessary for hers.

He looked down at the friendship bracelet attempts in his hands and bit his lip. The strings he’d chosen were knotted and bent awkwardly and, really, it was beyond repair --.

He gave up, tossing down the attempts and grabbing new strings. He started just spelling out everyone’s hero names on strings that were the colors of everyone’s eyes.

“Done,” he said, his ears burning with shame. He didn’t know anything about friendship bracelets or friendships and general and if it wasn’t clear to everyone before they’d definitely have figured it out now --.

“Wow. Amazing job, Chat. You’re a master craftsman,” said Chloe, sarcasm dripping from every letter she spoke.

“You… you don’t have to wear it.”

Chloe scoffed. “Shut up. I’m never taking it off.”

“Oh… but you don’t have to, really --.”

“I’m. Wearing. It. Screw. Off.”

“... okay,” he said, a tiny smile playing at his lips.

He gave everyone else theirs and, though he noticed they were all putting them on their ankles where they’d be harder for people to see, he couldn’t help but be happy that they were accepting them at all.

Carapace held up his five completed bracelets with a bright smile. “Tada!”

He walked around and started tying them to everyone’s wrists.

Chat saw both of the bugs look confused as they read over the block letters on theirs, Rena gave a short puff of laughter when she saw hers, and then he finally got to see his...

FURRY.

He rolled his eyes at Carapace but let him tie the bracelet to his ankle.

“What’s a ‘buggie’?” Said Chloe in a voice that said she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know.

“It’s a furry, but for bugs.”

“... how do you know that?” Asked Ladybug, sinking back into Carapace’s/her hoodie with a yawn.

“A few years back I joked that I was a furry and someone told me I was technically a ‘scaley’. Obviously, I had to know if everyone else was a furry after that or something else.”

Rena snickered. “Likely story.”

“It’s true!”

“Hm. Sure. Chloe, I’m done with you. Ladybug --.”

“I have an important meeting for work tomorrow, sorry.”

“Fine. Chat, c’mere.”

He hesitated before he made his way over and allowed her to start messing with his hair obediently.

Chloe shuffled over to Ladybug. There was a beat before Ladybug lifted the bottom of the hoodie and allowed Chloe to climb inside.

Carapace groaned. “Why are you stretching out my hoodie?”

Ladybug smiled and brought a hand up to stretch the neck so Chloe could pop her head out the top. “Forgot it was yours, honestly.”

“I hate you.”

“Guess I won’t fix this, then.”

“Wait -- Ladybug -- listen -- I didn’t mean it --.”

Ladybug and Chloe laid back and stuck their tongues out at him in unison. Carapace glared halfheartedly at them for a little while before walking over and laying on top of them.

“Ughhhh get off you’re heavy,” complained Ladybug. “You’re going to crush me.”

“Good. I’m squashing two annoying bugs.”

“Renaaaaa,” tried Chloe.

“Can’t help right now, I’m doing Chat’s hair.”

“Rena,” tried Carapace.

There was a moment’s hesitation before Rena gently tugged Chat over so she could help Carapace smother the two and still add colors to his hair.

“Nooooooo…”

“Chat help,” Ladybug squeaked, reaching out a hand in an attempt to pull him closer for help.

He considered the hand for a minute before pointedly looking away, a smile pulling at his lips.

Ladybug mumbled a curse and resigned herself to the fate of being crushed under three of her housemates.

Rena eventually finished with his hair and she took a picture to show him the results. He’d always wanted to do stuff with his hair, and since his haircolor was so light it wouldn’t have been hard, but his dad had never allowed it…

He smiled brightly and sent it to himself.

Rena shielded her eyes and he looked up at her, his smile dropping into a confused frown.

“Are you okay?”

“You’re, like… sunshine incarnate. Can’t look at you dead on, it’s too bright.”

“Right? He could give Adrien Agreste a run for his money,” joked Carapace.

He wasn’t sure if he was blushing because his housemates thought of him like that or because his civilian identity was apparently that popular. Still, he brought a hand up to cover his mouth as a new smile stretched across his face.

Rena slipped off of the pile of miraculous holders easily and took a seat about a meter away with her phone, leaning back in a pile of pillows. “Carapace, Ladybug, both of you should get to sleep. You both have stuff in the morning.”

“But --,” tried Carapace.

“I WILL knock you out if I have to. And there’s no coffee to keep you awake.”

The two groaned quietly and Carapace fell beside the two bugs. Instead of leaving, though, he just grabbed the nearest blanket and wrapped it around the three of them.

Chloe scoffed and started shifting around in the blanket/hoodie prison she was currently trapped in. “Hey, let me out, I’m not tired yet.”

Ladybug and Carapace wrapped an arm around her and held her still before she could get up. “We have to sleep, you have to sleep.”

“I don’t --.”

“Pillows don’t talk,” said Ladybug, nuzzling her face into Chloe’s neck with a yawn.

Chloe didn’t look particularly happy about it, but she did quiet herself.

Carapace reached his free hand towards Chat without looking over and he stared at it before taking it. He was pulled down to join the cuddle pile so fast that they knocked heads. There was a mumbled ‘ow’ and a hiss of pain, but otherwise it was hard to tell that it had happened.

Rena tossed a pillow at the lightswitch, which was… odd, but it did turn off the lights, so… yay?

He closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around Carapace’s stomach. He could hear the others’ steady breathing as they drifted off one by one.

But, for once, Chat wasn’t finding it easy to sleep.

Some things are easy to ignore.

For example, Chat could, for the most part, ignore the knowledge that he was likely the only person in the house who was genuinely interested in being friends. Everyone else was perfectly happy being friendly (because who wants to fight people in their own house?), but that’s not nearly the same thing.

But, since Chat was starved for affection, he opted to ignore what he knew to be the truth. Did it really matter if Carapace was only allowing him to hang off of him for the sake of preventing a strong akuma if he was getting the physical touch he hadn’t received since his mother had died? Did it really matter if Ladybug was only playing nicer for the sake of convenience if it meant he could get compliments from her instead of insults?

Kinda. But he was willing to push those thoughts aside.

And, while he wanted to ignore this problem too, he really shouldn’t. Their safety was much too important for that.

There should be very few people that knew where they were. There were the people who Chloe had hired to help her move in, Master Fu, each other...

But that didn’t explain why Chat’s room was left untouched.

The only thing that made sense for that was his dad… He tried to brush the thought aside like he had been doing for the entire night, but it was far more difficult when the others were asleep and weren’t serving as a distraction.

Would his dad sell him out? Sure, their relationship wasn’t near ‘close’, but that didn’t mean that his father hated him, right? His dad had known for a while, though, almost since the beginning. Why would he sell out now? The information was slightly more valuable now that they were living together, yes, but was that enough to make him betray his son for a super terrorist?

Worse yet, could his father be Hawkmoth? He didn’t think so, because his father had been akumatized multiple times, but there was nothing saying Hawkmoth couldn’t akumatize himself. Then again, he’d been pretty interested in Chat’s ring when he realized who he was… or was that just innocent curiosity? He also lived in the center of the area that Ladybug had mentioned she’d traced the akumas to, but so did every rich person --.

Carapace pulled him closer, his hand sliding up his back to work at a knot in his back.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” Chat teased, even as he pressed his face against his shoulder.

“You’re too tense.”

He let himself relax a bit. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault you’re the worst pillow ever.”

“Even worse than Chloe?”

“Somehow,” said Carapace, and Chat could almost hear the smile in his voice.

And, because it’s really hard to have bad thoughts when you’re cuddling a friend and getting a massage, Chat fell asleep in minutes.


	25. Chapter 25

But, unfortunately, the good mood didn’t last long.

Hungover, tired from lack of sleep, and sore from sleeping on the floor…

Not a great start to the day, but they had stuff to get done.

They’d all brought their technology and, after a few moments where they'd discussed their abilities, they’d gotten to work. If it were at any other time, with any other people, they could have been mistaken for just a set of teenagers engrossed in their technology of choice.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as lighthearted as it seemed to the untrained eye.

Ladybug pressed her lips into a thin line, eyes roving over every still frame of their TikToks.

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense AT ALL.

Why had Hawkmoth suddenly upped the ante? It had to have something to do with their accounts and/or the fact that they were now all living together, it was too soon after the start for it to be anything else, but then the answer should be obvious. It should be somewhere on their accounts…

And yet she couldn’t find anything. Nothing that could have provoked him, really.

She could see the conspiracy board in the background of Chloe’s video, but that didn’t mean much.

It showed their estimate of Hawkmoth’s height, which shouldn’t be much of a problem considering the fact that miraculi had a way of keeping people from figuring out who their holders are using physical characteristics alone...

It also showed some of the attributes/insults that the miraculous team had come up with. Had he been upset when Ladybug had pointed out his “stupid shaped condom head”? Insulted when Carapace had said he had “Rich asshole dad vibes (think Gabriel Agreste but more overtly evil)”? Hurt when Chloe had written “terrible fashion sense, probably straight”?

She didn’t think that was what had happened, lashing out over a few petty insults didn’t fit her profile of him. Hawkmoth was smug, Hawkmoth was cool and collected, and, above all, Hawkmoth was determined to keep his hands clean so he couldn’t be found.

Maybe that was it. He’d been threatened by the proof that they were actively looking for him.

She didn’t know. It didn’t make sense for someone who only ever came out when he thought he had won to appear for seemingly no reason…

But she brushed it off. They had bigger problems.

Namely, Hawkmoth shouldn’t have been able to find them. They’d done everything they could to keep their location a secret, from carefully placed camera angles to sneaking in through windows to asking Rena to cloak them when they could. So how had he found them?

The first answer they’d come up with was the people Chloe had hired to move her things in. Chloe had badgered her dad to figure out the names of the movers and given them over to Rena, who was doing a shockingly extensive background check on them all (they were opting not to question it).

“Three of them had a criminal record, but they were all minor. Public indecency, drunk driving, that kind of thing. Nothing that really screams ‘Hawkmoth’,” said Rena. “And the only one that fit the height requirement was the complete wrong skin color, so…”

“I doubt that any of them have property in the rich area of town, anyways,” said Chloe.

This earned a glare from the others and she shrunk back with a sheepish smile.

“It’s around the Eiffel Tower, though, we should check that out,” said Ladybug. “Since that’s a more or less easy to access place.”

Rena shook her head slightly. “There’s been akumas that have tried to take or destroy the Tower. If his base was there he wouldn’t have allowed that.”

They all considered this before deciding that made sense.

Carapace leaned back in the armchair with a long sigh. “I looked through all the comments. If anyone managed to find us that way they’d have to be speaking in code for me to have missed it.”

Chloe nodded and set her phone down. “I couldn’t find anything on the internet, either.”

There was a beat as the five of them considered this. If the movers hadn’t been Hawkmoth, and no one online had figured it out, then the only way Hawkmoth could have found out was…

The anxiety in the room spiked.

“So, we all agree that the traitor is probably Chat, right?” Said Chloe.

Chat frowned. “I was the only person fighting him for a while. Why would I even bother if I was a traitor?”

“To keep up looks, or maybe you only recently started working with him,” said Rena. “Besides, Hawkmoth needed the Ladybug miraculous, too, to make the wish. Maybe you were waiting for her to show up.”

Chat bit his lip and drew his knees to his chest. “No. The only reason that we even got a Ladybug was that I happened to be allergic to birds. I didn’t even know there were other miraculi until she showed up.”

“And that allergy was exploited quite a few times by Hawkmoth, so much so that another hero had to be involved. Sounds a little suspicious, honestly.”

Carapace sighed. “Please, that was just good strategy. Hawkmoth wanted another hero to appear, so he made it happen. There’s no reason to think that it was Chat’s fault.”

Rena didn’t seem all that convinced.

“Maybe we should get Chat to explain why his room wasn’t touched,” Chloe said.

“I can’t! Because, get this: I don’t know or help Hawkmoth!”

Carapace raised an eyebrow. “Can we talk about how eager you guys are to throw him under the bus?”

Rena frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m SAYING that someone here has been just a little too curious about us all. Not to mention you love it when stuff doesn’t go well for us. Or that you’re the newest member here.”

Rena pushed her laptop from her lap and got to her feet. “PLEASE. You’re just mad that all the signs are pointing towards your little friend betraying us!”

Carapace pushed himself to his feet as well, looking at Chloe and Rena with clear contempt. “And your ally is so great? Want to talk about how she messes up all the time and makes everything hard on us? She fucked up enough to get Ladybug to babysit but, sure, let’s go after the person who’s been putting his life on the line for the longest!”

Chloe launched herself at him --.

“ALRIGHT, THAT’S ENOUGH!”

Chloe’s hand stopped inches away from Carapace’s face. Carapace let go of her shirt. Rena unclenched her fists. Chat pulled his face out of his knees.

Ladybug crossed her arms over her chest. “Kwami. You’re acting like children.”

“But --,” tried Rena.

“NO.”

Rena snapped her mouth shut.

“I get that you’re all scared, and that’s UNDERSTANDABLE, but you need to get ahold of yourselves. This is exactly what Hawkmoth wanted, for us to be scared and angry and, most importantly, ready for akumatization. Yes, this is a big problem, but all of you need to go cool down.”

There was a beat before Chloe got off of Carapace and offered him a hand up. Carapace looked reluctant but, when Ladybug had turned her glare on him, he took it.

“Thank you.” Ladybug pressed her lips together as she considered her next words. “If you’re going to get akumatized, run out of Paris and do something to relax. Otherwise... Chat: play video games, Carapace: listen to music in your room, Rena: you can use my gym to work out, Chloe: do some gardening.”

There were a few moments as the four stared at her with wide eyes before they slowly shuffled off to do as they were told.

She waited to make sure they were gone before dropping her Ladybug persona and falling back on the couch. She rested her arm over her eyes.

Kwami, she hated that it had gotten that far. Really, she hadn’t expected it. While it wasn’t at all shocking that Rena and Chloe were confrontational and Chat would cower, she hadn’t thought Carapace would snap at them. 

Still, once she’d realized that things were escalating… she probably should have done something.

Not that she didn’t have a reason, because Ladybug always had a reason. She’d wanted to see their reasonings for why they could all be traitors.

… not that she genuinely thought there were traitors. The only person that was even slightly shady out of the lot of them was Rena, and she was pretty sure that was just because of her miraculous.

Ladybug clicked her tongue irritably.

How the hell was she supposed to prove to everyone else that they were all safe, though?


End file.
